Valeri, 13 (Andy, M.A. Interdisplinary Studies, adjunct at the School of Advertising
Art, founder of UnCommon Sense TVMedia. Communication, Human Rights, and The
Threat of Weapons of Mass Surveillance: Why Communication Rights Are Essential
To the Protection and Advancement of Human Rights in the 21st Century. Paper
presented at the conference on The Social Practice of Human Rights: Charting
the Frontiers of Research and Advocacy University of Dayton, October 3-5, 2013.
http://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1043&context=human_rights)
Were all familiar with Lord Actons famous axiom
about the corrupting effects of power, particularly that of absolute power. In
light of that, what are the
ramifications for the future of human rights and our right to communicate - to say nothing of the fate of global society on a whole – due to these increasing levels of access and control over
the global information environment that we are witnessing today, all
consolidated among a small cadre of private and state agencies? It is a situation which demands that we
redefine power and force relations in society, for if we do not, the
universality of the internet will merge global humanity into one giant grid of
mass surveillance and mass control" (Assange et al., p. 6). This
situation is untenable for any society hoping to assert democratic legitimacy
in its governance, for no
state can rightfully claim a monopoly on both violence and information and
communication, and still
proclaim itself to be democratically representative. A monopoly on the
ability to access and impart information, one imposed by the coercive force of state
power, makes the ability to form actual, legitimately participatory, democratically-based culture
impossible (Goodman, May 29, 2013). And it is
this capacity for public participation and accountability in a society, which
is essential to the defense and promotion of human rights (M. Ensalaco,
Politics of Human Rights POL 333 lecture, January 15, 2009). Social theorist and technologist Vinay
Gupta (2013) has pointed out how the Internet, once a promising opportunity for connecting
people, creating new businesses, and expanding our capacity
for culture, has today become a
surveillance trap. This certainly wasnt the intention
of its inventors, many of whom envisioned it as a way to attain more freedom
from being snooped on, filtered, censored and disconnected (Berners-Lee,
2011), not less. In fact, the very architecture of the Internet is predicated
upon such decentralization of power and authority over its operation (Wu, 2010,
pp. 197- 202). Yet, in spite of its
initial promise in further democratizing the dynamics of power, we cannot be
too overly surprised by some of the recent developments unfolding surrounding
its use (or abuse, depending on your perspective). Tools of liberation also
serve as tools for power to push back. We saw this in Egypt, as the social
media platforms which were used to organize protests against the Mubarak regime
were the same ones used by the regime to track down and arrest the very same
protestors (Gallagher, 2011). As Zeynep Tufekci (Ulrike Reinhard, 2012) has pointed
out, the use of new communication technologies may cause initial disruptions to
power, but power always responds. For instance, the advent of the printing
press gravely wounded the Catholic Church, but the Church adapted and survived
(Ulrike Reinhard, 2012). And now
today, the development of the Internet
has served to open up practically every dimension of society in a way never
before experienced – including to the means for total control The dream of being
connected is suddenly dystopic. The virtual commons is more closed than the
real one ever was. And it is becoming clearer and clearer that open source technology will
not be enough to us. Our social
networks have been infiltrated Totalitarian states around the globe are
waking up to the fact that if you really want to stay one step ahead, you dont suppress communication, instead
you empower communication with
gadgets and free Wi-Fi and listen in. And now were
all walking around with personal
surveillance devices in our pockets, smartphones which we voluntarily fill with every single
detail of our lives (A New Generation of Whistleblowers, 2013). Such developments pose an
existential threat to the future of human communication, and to our declared
right to engage in it without interference, to seek, receive and
impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers
(Article 19, UDHR). The Corrosive Effects of Surveillance on
Society and Its Threat To Human Rights French sociologist Jacques Ellul, in his
classic work The Technological Society (1964), illustrated the way in which
modern mass society becomes dependent upon the very technological processes
which simultaneously work to undermine it. Today, the shared instruments used by human beings around
the world to communicate with one another - the means
by which we create culture, engage and maintain personal relationships,
participate in civic affairs, maintain our society, and fulfill our humanity -
is being corrupted in ways which threaten the future
of democratic civilization. Just as mass production was the
defining backdrop for the struggle surrounding labor rights, mass surveillance
is rapidly becoming the defining framework for those of communication rights. Under
the auspices of fighting a seemingly perpetual war against an ever-present
threat of terrorism, the Internet has become the active terrain of war,
and is considered a battleground, part of the operational domain of the
military (Alexander, 2011). And battlegrounds are the least hospitable of environments for the
provision and the protection of human rights and the rule of law (Human Rights and Conflicts, n.d.). The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), with no legal mandate, and beyond the
bounds of American constitutional and international human rights law, has made
it its own explicit policy to collect and monitor every single form of
electronic communication on the planet (Nakashima
& Warrick, 2013). Or, as in the words of NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander,
to collect it all (Nakashima & Warrick, 2013), mirroring the official motto of the Stasi, the infamous
secret police force of the former East Germany - To Know Everything. William Binney, an NSA whistleblower who was the research head
of its Signals Intelligence Division and one of the principle
architects of these surveillance systems, has warned that their
existence creates the capacity for a turnkey totalitarianism, the likes of
which we have never seen before (Bamford,
2012).
Trumpet 2k (When Democracy Fails,
https://www.thetrumpet.com/article/367.26261.27.0/world/government/when-democracy-fails?preview)
THE DAWNING OF THE 20TH century had brightened
the great and continuing
hopes of [hu]mankind for
peace and goodwill among nations. The president of Stanford
University at the time expressed these hopes in a book he authored at the turn
of the century: The man of the 20th century will be a hopeful man. He will
love the world, and the world will love him (David Starr Jordan, The Call of
the Twentieth Century). Such hopes were gravely dashed in the mud,
flames and agony of the dying, injured and displaced in World War I. Arthur
Schlesinger Jr. comments, Looking back, we
recall a century marked a good deal less by love than by hate, irrationality and atrocity, one
that for a long dark passage inspired the gravest forebodings about the very survival of the human race (Foreign
Affairs, Sept./Oct. 1997, p. 3). Thus, although people of good will in 1900 believed in the inevitability
of democracy, the invincibility of progress, the decency of human nature, and
the coming reign of reason and peace (ibid.), a gray pall soon settled
over humankind as the 20th centurys wars, floods, fires, famines, pestilences,
earthquakes and the outbreak of an uncontrollable AIDS pandemic slaughtered
multiple millions in their prime. And yet, the same global euphoria gripped the
world in the wake of the Soviet Unions collapse and the end of the cold war as
the 20th century waned. Hopes of a new world order were declared. The
end-of-history historian Francis Fukiyama expounded his theme of the
universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government. If indeed universal liberal democracy is the final hope for [hu]mankind
in the his quest for a form of government that will bring peace and unity to humankind, what if
it fails? It collapsed due to the political, economic
and moral failure to deal with the forces of evil, twice in
the days of appeasement of the enemy in the
years preceding World Wars I and II. If indeed liberal democracy, of
all the forms of government tried by man over 6,000 years of recorded history,
is the best that man can find, to what form
of government do we then turn in the event of a third collapse? If
liberal democracy fails in the 21st century, as it
failed in the 20th, to construct a humane, prosperous and peaceful world, it
will invite
the rise of alternative creeds apt to be based, like fascism
and communism, on flight from freedom and surrender to authority (ibid., p.
4). Following the liberal democratic dictum
which declares that a nation will never go to war with a trading partner, the Western democracies zealously pursue globalization of
trade and commerce. As Josef Joffe, editor for Sddeutsche Zeitung, puts it,
Today the United States is
more like Bismarks Germany,
developing [trade] alliances with
everyone so that ganging up against it is impossible (ibid., p. I). Perhaps
that is why the U.S. does not begin to recognize the grave threat that is increasingly being posed by the
Bismarkian corporate leaders
of
Germany to its trading economy (see article, p. 21).
Weinberger 9 (Seth Harold is Associate
Professor of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound. He
received his B.A. (1993) in political philosophy from the University of
Chicago, an M.A. (1995) in Security Studies from Georgetown University, and an
M.A. (2000) and Ph.D. (2005) in political science from Duke University) Restoring the balance: war powers in an
age of terror. ABC-CLIO, 2009.
DOMESTIC WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE BY THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
(xo1)
DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE AS A LEGISLATIVE POWER Why should
domestic surveillance be seen as a fundamentally different power than deploying
troops and initiating hostilities? Both are actions taken in defense of the
country, and as the memo by Gonzales makes clear, communications surveillance
has, unquestionably, traditionally been part and parcel of any war effort.
That, in essence, is the heart of the administrations defense of the NSA
surveillance program: that the United
States is currently in a war that has been
declared by Congress, thereby activating the presidents full complement
of war powers (although the
presidents constitutional powers would empower him to act even if Congress had
not declared war) which necessarily includes wiretapping,
which has traditionally been a fundamental incident of war. However, that
argument is predicated, at least to some degree, on a false premise: that
the surveillance conducted
by the National Security Agency
after the September 11 attacks was fundamentally
similar to the surveillance operations conducted in the other wars described by Gonzales and the programs
supporters. But it is not at all clear that they are fundamentally
similar. And if they are indeed not similar, it does not necessarily follow that
the domestic warrantless wiretapping authorized by President Bush should be
understood as a fundamental incident of the war on terror. In defense of his
claim that warrantless wartime surveillance is a fundamental incident of war,
Gonzales makes reference to the following examples: George Washington, who
intercepted British mail during the American Revolutionary War to gain
information on British military strength and positions; Confederate General
J.E.B. Stuart, who intercepted Union telegraphic communications during the
Civil War; the U.S. Armys interception of Pancho Villas messages during the
Spanish-American War; President Wilsons censoring of messages leaving the
United States during World War I as well as the use of wireless telegraphy
that enabled each belligerent to tap the messages of the enemy; and
multiple instances of surveillance immediately prior to and during World War
II, including warrantless electronic surveillance of persons suspected of
subversive activities.52 Making the same argument, John Yoo states that
General Washington used spies extensively during the Revolutionary War, that
President Lincoln personally hired spies during the Civil War, and that in
both World Wars I and II, presidents ordered the interception of electronic
communications leaving the United States.53 All of the instances listed
have several characteristics in common. In each
of them there was a clearly defined battlefront, a
clearly defined enemy, clearly defined war aims, and a
conceivable end. Even when the purpose
of the surveillance was to root out those spying for the enemy (as in
World War II) who would not have perhaps been obviously identifiable as a
member of the enemys armed forces, there still
would have been some way of tracing those spies directly to the enemy
government that employed them. Furthermore, all
of these examples (except for the Revolutionary War, which obviously
took place before the drafting and adoption of the Constitution and the
creation of Congress) occurred under formal
declarations of war, or in the case of the Civil War, a functionally identical legislative alternative. The war on terrorism presents conditions different from the conflicts offered as precedents here. It has no identifiable front
lines, few identifiable enemies, poorly defined war aims, and no foreseeable end. And these differences
are not just semantic. As Justice OConnor wrote in the
Hamdi decision, if the practical
circumstances of a given conflict are entirely unlike those of the conflicts
that informed the development of the law of war, that understanding [of what should powers be considered
fundamental incidents of war] may unravel.54 In Hamdi, the Supreme
Court found that the Bush administration could indeed indefinitely detain
individuals seized on the battlefield in Afghanistan and accused of fighting on
behalf of the Taliban because detention to prevent a combatants return to the
battlefield is a fundamental incident of waging war.55 However, OConnors
opinion was careful to note that this decision was predicated on the fact that
the American military operations in Afghanistan closely resembled traditional
military operations, in that they were directed against the government (the
Taliban) of a (more or less) traditional state. It certainly stretches
the imagination to argue that giving the president of the United
States unchecked powers to conduct domestic surveillance operations
indefinitely against U.S. citizens or residents in order to determine whether
they might be agents of a foreign terrorist organization resembles the
practical circumstances that informed the development of the law of war.
These differences seem to suggest that the presidents inherent plenary
war powers may not include domestic warrantless wiretapping. Furthermore, the unique nature of the war on terrorism means that we must not only question the traditional tools
of fighting, but that we
must also think carefully about the relationship between strategy and the war
aims. Audrey Kurth Cronin writes that: International
terrorism is not dangerous because it can defeat us in a [conventional] war,
but because it can destroy the domestic contract of the state by further undermining its ability to protect its citizens
from attack. The . . . greatest danger is not defeat on the battlefield
but damage to the integrity and value of the state . . . The use of terrorism implies an attempt to de-legitimize .
. . the structure of the state system itself.56 This quotation cuts both
ways. On the one hand, it suggests that the state must be able to protect its
citizens, and if it cannot, the people will lose faith in their government. On
the other, however, it also seems to suggest that the
people must respect the values of their government, and that those values
must not be sacrificed in blind
[ignorant] pursuit of security. Philip Bobbitt echoes this latter
concern, writing that it is also important to
be clear about what we are fighting for. A
state of consent [like the United States] in the current era is
not merely one whose elections reflect majoritarian practices but one which rests on the
protection of certain fundamental rights—inalienable rights, a legal term that means rights
that cannot be ceded, or bartered, or sold.57 Bobbitt continues on this theme,
arguing that the decision by the Bush administration to ignore FISA and secretly authorize the NSA program was particularly
damaging. He writes that when
[President Bush] decides
not to enforce a statutory provision because the measure is, in his view,
unconstitutional and neglects to say so (much
less why), he sacrifices the legitimacy
that comes from the publics understanding of the decision and undermines our
system of public consent. Moreover, when
secret policies are exposed, the appearance of indifference to law is
heightened, which can only damage U.S. war aims in the Wars against Terror.58
Thus, the immediate efficacy of the policy in
question cannot be the sole determinant of its legitimacy, legality, or
constitutionality. An effective policy that undermines the
consensual nature of the country or that erodes certain fundamental rights
may ultimately do more harm than good. This reconfiguration of
the relationship between strategy and tactics in the
war on terrorism raises further doubts
about the status of warrantless and unregulated
domestic surveillance as a fundamental incident of war.
Economist 14 (Whats gone wrong with
democracy?, 3-1-14, http://www.economist.com/news/essays/21596796-democracy-was-most-successful-political-idea-20th-century-why-has-it-run-trouble-and-what-can-be-do)
The protesters who have overturned the politics of
Ukraine have many aspirations for their country. Their placards called
for closer relations with the European Union (EU), an end to Russian
intervention in Ukraines politics and the establishment of a clean government
to replace the kleptocracy of President Viktor Yanukovych. But their
fundamental demand is one that has motivated people over many decades to take a
stand against corrupt, abusive and autocratic governments. They
want a rules-based democracy. It is easy to understand why. Democracies
are on average richer than non-democracies, are less likely to go to war and
have a better record of fighting corruption. More fundamentally,
democracy lets people speak their minds and shape their own and their
childrens futures. That so many people in so many different parts of the world
are prepared to risk so much for this idea is testimony to its enduring appeal.
Yet these days the exhilaration generated by events
like those in Kiev is mixed with anxiety, for a troubling pattern has repeated
itself in capital after capital. The people mass in the main square.
Regime-sanctioned thugs try to fight back but lose their nerve in the face of
popular intransigence and global news coverage. The world applauds the collapse
of the regime and offers to help build a democracy. But turfing out an autocrat
turns out to be much easier than setting up a viable democratic government. The new regime stumbles, the economy flounders and the
country finds itself in a state at least as bad as it was before. This
is what happened in much of the Arab spring, and also in Ukraines Orange
revolution a decade ago. In 2004 Mr Yanukovych was ousted from office by vast
street protests, only to be re-elected to the presidency (with the help of huge
amounts of Russian money) in 2010, after the opposition politicians who
replaced him turned out to be just as hopeless. Democracy is going through a
difficult time. Where autocrats have been
driven out of office, their opponents have mostly failed to create viable
democratic regimes. Even in established democracies, flaws
in the system have become worryingly visible and disillusion with politics is
rife. Yet just a few years ago democracy looked as though it
would dominate the world. In the second half of the
20th century, democracies had taken root in the most difficult circumstances
possible—in Germany, which had been traumatised by Nazism, in
India, which had the worlds largest population of poor people, and, in the
1990s, in South Africa, which had been disfigured by apartheid.
Decolonialisation created a host of new democracies in Africa and Asia, and
autocratic regimes gave way to democracy in Greece (1974), Spain (1975),
Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985) and Chile (1989). The collapse of the Soviet
Union created many fledgling democracies in central Europe. By 2000 Freedom House, an American think-tank, classified
120 countries, or 63% of the world total, as democracies.
Representatives of more than 100 countries gathered at the World Forum on
Democracy in Warsaw that year to proclaim that the will of the people was
the basis of the authority of government. A report
issued by Americas State Department declared that having seen off
failed experiments with authoritarian and totalitarian forms of government, it seems that now, at long last, democracy is triumphant.
Such hubris was surely understandable after such a run of successes. But stand
farther back and the triumph of democracy looks rather less inevitable. After the fall of Athens,
where it was first developed, the political model had lain dormant until the
Enlightenment more than 2,000
years later. In the 18th century only the American revolution
produced a sustainable democracy. During the 19th century monarchists fought a
prolonged rearguard action against democratic forces. In the first half of the 20th century nascent democracies
collapsed in Germany, Spain and Italy. By 1941 there were only 11 democracies
left, and Franklin Roosevelt worried that it might not be possible to shield
the great flame of democracy from the blackout of barbarism. The two main reasons are the financial crisis of 2007-08
and the rise of China. The damage the crisis did was psychological as
well as financial. It revealed fundamental weaknesses in the Wests political
systems, undermining the self-confidence that had been one of their great
assets. Governments had steadily extended entitlements over decades, allowing
dangerous levels of debt to develop, and politicians came to believe that they
had abolished boom-bust cycles and tamed risk. Many people became disillusioned with the
workings of their political systems—particularly when
governments bailed out bankers with taxpayers money and then stood by
impotently as financiers continued to pay themselves huge bonuses. The crisis
turned the Washington consensus into a term of reproach across the emerging
world. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party
has broken the democratic
worlds monopoly on economic progress. Larry Summers, of Harvard
University, observes that when America was growing fastest, it doubled living
standards roughly every 30 years. China has been doubling living standards
roughly every decade for the past 30 years. The Chinese elite argue that their
model—tight control by the Communist Party, coupled with a relentless
effort to recruit talented people into its upper ranks—is more efficient
than democracy and less susceptible to gridlock. The political leadership
changes every decade or so, and there is a constant supply of fresh talent as
party cadres are promoted based on their ability to hit targets. Chinas
critics rightly condemn the government for controlling public opinion in all
sorts of ways, from imprisoning dissidents to censoring internet discussions.
Yet the regimes obsession with control paradoxically means it pays close
attention to public opinion. At the same time Chinas leaders have been able to
tackle some of the big problems of state-building that can take decades to deal
with in a democracy. In just two years China has extended pension coverage to
an extra 240m rural dwellers, for example—far more than the total number
of people covered by Americas public-pension system. Many Chinese are prepared
to put up with their system if it delivers growth. The 2013 Pew Survey of
Global Attitudes showed that 85% of Chinese were very satisfied with their
countrys direction, compared with 31% of Americans. Some Chinese intellectuals
have become positively boastful. Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University argues that
democracy is destroying the West, and particularly America, because it
institutionalises gridlock, trivialises decision-making and throws up
second-rate presidents like George Bush junior. Yu Keping of Beijing University
argues that democracy makes simple things overly complicated and frivolous
and allows certain sweet-talking politicians to mislead the people. Wang
Jisi, also of Beijing University, has observed that many developing countries
that have introduced Western values and political systems are experiencing
disorder and chaos and that China offers an alternative model. Countries from
Africa (Rwanda) to the Middle East (Dubai) to South-East Asia (Vietnam) are
taking this advice seriously. Chinas advance is all
the more potent in the context of a series of disappointments for democrats
since 2000. The first great setback was in Russia.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the democratisation of the old Soviet
Union seemed inevitable. In the 1990s Russia took a few drunken steps in that
direction under Boris Yeltsin. But at the end of 1999 he resigned and handed
power to Vladimir Putin, a former KGB operative who has since been both prime
minister and president twice. This postmodern tsar has destroyed the substance
of democracy in Russia, muzzling the press and imprisoning his opponents, while
preserving the show—everyone can vote, so long as Mr Putin wins. Autocratic leaders in Venezuela, Ukraine, Argentina and
elsewhere have followed suit, perpetuating a perverted simulacrum of
democracy rather than doing away with it altogether, and thus discrediting it
further. The next big setback was the Iraq war. When Saddam Husseins fabled
weapons of mass destruction failed to materialise after the American-led
invasion of 2003, Mr Bush switched instead to justifying the war as a fight for
freedom and democracy. The concerted effort of free nations to promote
democracy is a prelude to our enemies defeat, he argued in his second
inaugural address. This was more than mere opportunism: Mr Bush sincerely
believed that the Middle East would remain a breeding ground for terrorism so
long as it was dominated by dictators. But it did the democratic cause great
harm. Left-wingers regarded it as proof that democracy was just a figleaf for American
imperialism. Foreign-policy realists took Iraqs growing chaos as proof that
American-led promotion of democratisation was a recipe for instability. And
disillusioned neoconservatives such as Francis Fukuyama, an American political
scientist, saw it as proof that democracy cannot put down roots in stony
ground. A third serious setback was Egypt. The collapse of Hosni Mubaraks
regime in 2011, amid giant protests, raised hopes that democracy would spread
in the Middle East. But the euphoria soon turned to despair. Egypts ensuing
elections were won not by liberal activists (who were hopelessly divided into a
myriad of Pythonesque parties) but by Muhammad Morsis Muslim Brotherhood. Mr
Morsi treated democracy as a winner-takes-all system, packing the state with
Brothers, granting himself almost unlimited powers and creating an upper house
with a permanent Islamic majority. In July 2013 the army stepped in, arresting
Egypts first democratically elected president, imprisoning leading members of
the Brotherhood and killing hundreds of demonstrators. Along with war in Syria
and anarchy in Libya, this has dashed the hope that the Arab spring would lead
to a flowering of democracy across the Middle East. Meanwhile some recent
recruits to the democratic camp have lost their lustre. Since the introduction
of democracy in 1994 South Africa has been ruled by the same party, the African
National Congress, which has become progressively more self-serving. Turkey,
which once seemed to combine moderate Islam with prosperity and democracy, is
descending into corruption and autocracy. In Bangladesh, Thailand and Cambodia,
opposition parties have boycotted recent elections or refused to accept their
results. All this has demonstrated that building the institutions needed to
sustain democracy is very slow work indeed, and has dispelled the once-popular
notion that democracy will blossom rapidly and spontaneously once the seed is
planted. Although democracy may be a universal aspiration, as Mr Bush and
Tony Blair insisted, it is a culturally rooted practice. Western countries
almost all extended the right to vote long after the establishment of
sophisticated political systems, with powerful civil services and entrenched
constitutional rights, in societies that cherished the notions of individual
rights and independent judiciaries. Yet in recent years the very
institutions that are meant to provide models for new democracies have come to
seem outdated and dysfunctional in established ones. The United
States
has become a byword for gridlock, so obsessed with partisan
point-scoring that it has come to the verge of defaulting on its debts twice in
the past two years. Its democracy is also corrupted by gerrymandering, the
practice of drawing constituency boundaries to entrench the power of
incumbents. This encourages extremism, because politicians have to appeal only
to the party faithful, and in effect disenfranchises large numbers of voters. And money
talks louder than ever in American politics. Thousands of lobbyists
(more than 20 for every member of Congress) add to
the length and complexity of legislation, the better to smuggle in special privileges. All this creates the impression that American democracy is for sale and that
the rich have more power than the poor, even as lobbyists and
donors insist that political expenditure is an exercise in free speech. The
result is that Americas image—and by extension that of democracy itself—has
taken a terrible
battering. Nor is the EU a paragon of democracy. The decision to
introduce the euro in 1999 was taken largely by technocrats; only two
countries, Denmark and Sweden, held referendums on the matter (both said no).
Efforts to win popular approval for the Lisbon Treaty, which consolidated power
in Brussels, were abandoned when people started voting the wrong way. During
the darkest days of the euro crisis the euro-elite forced Italy and Greece to
replace democratically elected leaders with technocrats. The European
Parliament, an unsuccessful attempt to fix Europes democratic deficit, is both
ignored and despised. The EU has become a breeding ground for populist parties,
such as Geert Wilderss Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and Marine Le
Pens National Front in France, which claim to defend ordinary people against
an arrogant and incompetent elite. Greeces Golden Dawn is testing how far
democracies can tolerate Nazi-style parties. A project designed to tame the
beast of European populism is instead poking it back into life. Even in its
heartland, democracy is clearly suffering from serious structural problems,
rather than a few isolated ailments. Since the dawn of the modern democratic
era in the late 19th century, democracy has expressed itself through
nation-states and national parliaments. People elect representatives who pull
the levers of national power for a fixed period. But this arrangement is now
under assault from both above and below. From above, globalisation has changed
national politics profoundly. National politicians have surrendered ever more
power, for example over trade and financial flows, to global markets and
supranational bodies, and may thus find that they are unable to keep promises
they have made to voters. International organisations such as the International
Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the European Union have
extended their influence. There is a compelling logic to much of this: how can
a single country deal with problems like climate change or tax evasion?
National politicians have also responded to globalisation by limiting their discretion
and handing power to unelected technocrats in some areas. The number of
countries with independent central banks, for example, has increased from about
20 in 1980 to more than 160 today. From below come equally powerful challenges:
from would-be breakaway nations, such as the Catalans and the Scots, from
Indian states, from American city mayors. All are trying to reclaim power from
national governments. There are also a host of what Moiss Naim, of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, calls micro-powers, such as NGOs
and lobbyists, which are disrupting traditional politics and making life harder
for democratic and autocratic leaders alike. The internet makes it easier to
organise and agitate; in a world where people can participate in reality-TV
votes every week, or support a petition with the click of a mouse, the
machinery and institutions of parliamentary democracy, where elections happen
only every few years, look increasingly anachronistic. Douglas Carswell, a
British member of parliament, likens traditional politics to HMV, a chain of
British record shops that went bust, in a world where people are used to
calling up whatever music they want whenever they want via Spotify, a popular
digital music-streaming service. The biggest challenge to democracy, however,
comes neither from above nor below but from within—from the voters
themselves. Platos great worry about democracy, that citizens would live from
day to day, indulging the pleasure of the moment, has proved prescient.
Democratic governments got into the habit of running big structural deficits as
a matter of course, borrowing to give voters what they wanted in the short
term, while neglecting long-term investment. France and Italy have not balanced
their budgets for more than 30 years. The financial crisis starkly exposed the
unsustainability of such debt-financed democracy. With the post-crisis stimulus
winding down, politicians must now confront the difficult trade-offs they
avoided during years of steady growth and easy credit. But persuading voters to
adapt to a new age of austerity will not prove popular at the ballot box. Slow
growth and tight budgets will provoke conflict as interest groups compete for
limited resources. To make matters worse, this competition is taking place as
Western populations are ageing. Older people have always been better at getting
their voices heard than younger ones, voting in greater numbers and organising
pressure groups like Americas mighty AARP. They will increasingly have
absolute numbers on their side. Many democracies now face a fight between past
and future, between inherited entitlements and future investment. Adjusting to
hard times will be made even more difficult by a growing cynicism towards
politics. Party membership is declining across the developed world: only 1% of
Britons are now members of political parties compared with 20% in 1950. Voter
turnout is falling, too: a study of 49 democracies found that it had declined
by 10 percentage points between 1980-84 and 2007-13. A survey of seven European
countries in 2012 found that more than half of voters had no trust in
government whatsoever. A YouGov opinion poll of British voters in the same
year found that 62% of those polled agreed that politicians tell lies all the
time. Meanwhile the border between poking fun and launching protest campaigns
is fast eroding. In 2010 Icelands Best Party, promising to be openly corrupt,
won enough votes to co-run Reykjaviks city council. And in 2013 a quarter of
Italians voted for a party founded by Beppe Grillo, a comedian. All this
popular cynicism about politics might be healthy if people demanded little from
their governments, but they continue to want a great deal. The result can be a
toxic and unstable mixture: dependency on government on the one hand, and
disdain for it on the other. The dependency forces government to overexpand and
overburden itself, while the disdain robs it of its legitimacy. Democratic
dysfunction goes hand in hand with democratic distemper. Democracys
problems in its heartland help explain its setbacks elsewhere. Democracy did well in the 20th century in part because of American hegemony:
other countries naturally wanted to emulate the worlds leading power. But as
Chinas influence has grown, America and Europe have lost their appeal
as role models and their appetite for spreading democracy.
The Obama administration now seems paralysed by the fear that democracy will
produce rogue regimes or empower jihadists. And why
should developing countries regard democracy as the ideal form of government
when the American government cannot even pass a budget, let alone plan for the
future? Why should autocrats listen to lectures on democracy from
Europe, when the euro-elite sacks elected leaders who get in the way of fiscal
orthodoxy? At the same time, democracies in the
emerging world have encountered the same problems as those in the rich world.
They too have overindulged in short-term spending rather than long-term
investment. Brazil allows public-sector workers to retire at 53 but has done
little to create a modern airport system. India pays off vast numbers of client
groups but invests too little in infrastructure. Political systems have been
captured by interest groups and undermined by anti-democratic habits. Patrick
French, a British historian, notes that every member of Indias lower house
under the age of 30 is a member of a political dynasty. Even within the
capitalist elite, support for democracy is fraying: Indian business moguls
constantly complain that Indias chaotic democracy produces rotten
infrastructure while Chinas authoritarian system produces highways, gleaming
airports and high-speed trains. Democracy has been on the back foot before. In
the 1920s and 1930s communism and fascism looked like the coming things: when
Spain temporarily restored its parliamentary government in 1931, Benito
Mussolini likened it to returning to oil lamps in the age of electricity. In
the mid-1970s Willy Brandt, a former German chancellor, pronounced that
western Europe has only 20 or 30 more years of democracy left in it; after
that it will slide, engineless and rudderless, under the surrounding sea of
dictatorship. Things are not that bad these days, but China poses a far more
credible threat than communism ever did to the idea that democracy is
inherently superior and will eventually prevail. Yet Chinas stunning advances
conceal deeper problems. The elite is becoming a self-perpetuating and
self-serving clique. The 50 richest members of the Chinas National Peoples
Congress are collectively worth $94.7 billion—60 times as much as the 50
richest members of Americas Congress. Chinas growth rate has slowed from 10%
to below 8% and is expected to fall further—an enormous challenge for a
regime whose legitimacy depends on its ability to deliver consistent growth. At
the same time, as Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in the 19th century,
democracies always look weaker than they really are: they are all confusion on
the surface but have lots of hidden strengths. Being able to install alternative
leaders offering alternative policies makes democracies better than autocracies
at finding creative solutions to problems and rising to existential challenges,
though they often take a while to zigzag to the right policies. But to succeed, both fledgling and established democracies
must ensure they are built on firm foundations. The most striking thing
about the founders of modern democracy such as James Madison and John Stuart
Mill is how hard-headed they were. They regarded democracy
as a powerful but imperfect mechanism: something that needed to be designed carefully, in order to
harness human creativity but also to check human perversity, and then kept in good working order, constantly oiled,
adjusted and worked upon. The need for hard-headedness is particularly
pressing when establishing a nascent democracy. One
reason why so many democratic experiments have failed recently is that they put too much emphasis on
elections and too little on the other essential features
of democracy. The power of the state needs to be checked,
for instance, and individual rights such as freedom of speech and
freedom to organise must be
guaranteed. The most successful new democracies have all worked
in large part because they avoided the temptation of majoritarianism—the
notion that winning an election entitles the majority to do whatever it
pleases. India has survived as a democracy since 1947 (apart from a couple of
years of emergency rule) and Brazil since the mid-1980s for much the same reason:
both put limits on the power of the government and provided guarantees for
individual rights. Robust constitutions not only promote long-term stability,
reducing the likelihood that disgruntled minorities will take against the
regime. They also bolster the struggle against corruption, the bane of
developing countries. Conversely, the first sign that a fledgling democracy is
heading for the rocks often comes when elected rulers try to erode constraints
on their power—often in the name of majority rule. Mr Morsi tried to pack
Egypts upper house with supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr Yanukovych
reduced the power of Ukraines parliament. Mr Putin has ridden roughshod over
Russias independent institutions in the name of the people. Several African
leaders are engaging in crude majoritarianism—removing term limits on the
presidency or expanding penalties against homosexual behaviour, as Ugandas
president Yoweri Museveni did on February 24th. Foreign leaders should be more
willing to speak out when rulers engage in such illiberal behaviour, even if a
majority supports it. But the people who most need to learn this lesson are the
architects of new democracies: they must recognise that robust checks and
balances are just as vital to the establishment of a healthy democracy as the
right to vote. Paradoxically even potential dictators have a lot to learn from
events in Egypt and Ukraine: Mr Morsi would not be spending his life shuttling
between prison and a glass box in an Egyptian court, and Mr Yanukovych would not
be fleeing for his life, if they had not enraged their compatriots by
accumulating so much power. Even those lucky enough to live in mature democracies need to
pay close attention to the architecture of their political systems.
The combination of globalisation and the digital revolution has made some of
democracys most cherished institutions look outdated. Established
democracies need to update their own political systems both to address the problems they
face at home, and to revitalise democracys image abroad. Some countries have already embarked upon
this process. Americas Senate has made it harder for senators to filibuster
appointments. A few states have introduced open primaries and handed
redistricting to independent boundary commissions. Other obvious changes would
improve matters. Reform of party financing, so that the names of all donors are
made public, might reduce the influence of special interests. The European
Parliament could require its MPs to present receipts with their expenses.
Italys parliament has far too many members who are paid too much, and two
equally powerful chambers, which makes it difficult to get anything done. But reformers
need to be much more ambitious. The best way to
constrain the power of special interests is to limit the number of
goodies that the state can hand out. And the best way to address popular
disillusion towards politicians is to reduce the number of promises they can
make. The key to a healthier democracy, in short, is a narrower state—an
idea that dates back to the American revolution. In framing a government which
is to be administered by men over men, Madison argued, the great difficulty
lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and
in the next place oblige it to control itself. The notion of limited
government was also integral to the relaunch of democracy after the second
world war. The United Nations Charter (1945) and the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (1948) established rights and norms that countries could not
breach, even if majorities wanted to do so. The most successful new democracies
managed to avoid the temptation of majoritarianism These checks and balances
were motivated by fear of tyranny. But today, particularly in the West, the big
dangers to democracy are harder to spot. One is the growing size of the state.
The relentless expansion of government is reducing liberty and handing ever
more power to special interests. The other comes from governments habit of
making promises that it cannot fulfil, either by creating entitlements it
cannot pay for or by waging wars that it cannot win, such as that on drugs.
Both voters and governments must be persuaded of the merits of accepting
restraints on the states natural tendency to overreach. Giving control of
monetary policy to independent central banks tamed the rampant inflation of the
1980s, for example. It is time to apply the same principle of limited
government to a broader range of policies. Mature
democracies, just like nascent ones, require appropriate checks and balances on
the power of elected government. Governments can exercise self-restraint
in several different ways. They can put on a golden straitjacket by adopting
tight fiscal rules—as the Swedes have done by pledging to balance their
budget over the economic cycle. They can introduce sunset clauses that force
politicians to renew laws every ten years, say. They can ask non-partisan
commissions to propose long-term reforms. The Swedes rescued their pension
system from collapse when an independent commission suggested pragmatic reforms
including greater use of private pensions, and linking the retirement age to
life-expectancy. Chile has been particularly successful at managing the
combination of the volatility of the copper market and populist pressure to
spend the surplus in good times. It has introduced strict rules to ensure that
it runs a surplus over the economic cycle, and appointed a commission of
experts to determine how to cope with economic volatility. Isnt this a recipe
for weakening democracy by handing more power to the great and the good? Not
necessarily. Self-denying rules can strengthen democracy by preventing people
from voting for spending policies that produce bankruptcy and social breakdown
and by protecting minorities from persecution. But technocracy can certainly be
taken too far. Power must be delegated sparingly, in
a few big areas such as monetary policy and entitlement reform, and the process
must be open and transparent. And delegation upwards towards
grandees and technocrats must be balanced by
delegation downwards, handing some decisions to ordinary people.
The trick is to harness the twin forces of globalism and localism,
rather than trying to ignore or resist them. With the right balance
of these two approaches, the same forces that threaten
established democracies from above, through globalisation, and below, through
the rise of micro-powers, can reinforce rather than undermine democracy. Tocqueville
argued that local democracy frequently represented democracy at its best:
Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring
it within the peoples reach, they teach men how to use and enjoy it. City
mayors regularly get twice the approval ratings of national politicians. Modern technology can implement a modern version of
Tocquevilles town-hall meetings to promote civic involvement and innovation.
An online hyperdemocracy where everything is put to an endless series of public
votes would play to the hand of special-interest groups. But technocracy and
direct democracy can keep each other in check: independent budget commissions
can assess the cost and feasibility of local ballot initiatives, for example.
Several places are making progress towards getting this mixture right. The most
encouraging example is California. Its system of direct democracy allowed its
citizens to vote for contradictory policies, such as higher spending and lower
taxes, while closed primaries and gerrymandered districts institutionalised
extremism. But over the past five years California has introduced a series of
reforms, thanks in part to the efforts of Nicolas Berggruen, a philanthropist
and investor. The state has introduced a Think Long committee to counteract
the short-term tendencies of ballot initiatives. It has introduced open
primaries and handed power to redraw boundaries to an independent commission.
And it has succeeded in balancing its budget—an achievement which Darrell
Steinberg, the leader of the California Senate, described as almost surreal.
Similarly, the Finnish government has set up a non-partisan commission to
produce proposals for the future of its pension system. At the same time it is
trying to harness e-democracy: parliament is obliged to consider any citizens
initiative that gains 50,000 signatures. But many more such experiments are
needed—combining technocracy with direct democracy, and upward and
downward delegation—if democracy is to zigzag its way back to health.
John Adams, Americas second president, once pronounced that democracy never
lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a
democracy yet that did not commit suicide. He was clearly wrong. Democracy
was the great victor of the ideological clashes of the 20th century. But if democracy is to remain as
successful in the 21st century as it was in the 20th, it must be both assiduously nurtured when it is
young—and carefully maintained when it
is mature.
Azar Gat 11, the Ezer Weizman Professor of
National Security at Tel Aviv University, 2011, The Changing Character of
War, in The Changing Character of War, ed. Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers,
p. 30-32
Since 1945, the decline of major great
power war has deepened further. Nuclear weapons have concentrated the
minds of all concerned wonderfully, but no less important have been the
institutionalization of free trade and the closely related process of rapid and
sustained economic growth throughout the capitalist world. The communist bloc
did not participate in the system of free trade, but at least initially it too
experienced substantial growth, and, unlike Germany and Japan, it was always
sufciently large and rich in natural resources to maintain an autarky of sorts.
With the Soviet collapse and with the integration of the former communist
powers into the global capitalist economy, the prospect of a major war within
the developed world seems to have become very remote indeed. This is one of the
main sources for the feeling that war has been transformed: its geopolitical
centre of gravity has shifted radically. The modernized, economically developed
parts of the world constitute a zone of peace. War now seems to be conned to
the less-developed parts of the globe, the worlds zone of war, where
countries that have so far failed to embrace modernization and its pacifying
spin-off effects continue to be engaged in wars among themselves, as well as
with developed countries. While the trend is very real, one
wonders if the near disappearance of armed conict within the developed world is likely to remain as stark as it has been since
the collapse of communism. The post-Cold War moment may turn out to be a
eeting one. The probability of major wars within the developed world
remains low—because
of the factors already mentioned: increasing wealth, economic openness and
interdependence, and nuclear deterrence. But the deep sense of change
prevailing since 1989 has been based on the far more radical notion that the
triumph of capitalism also spelled the irresistible ultimate victory of democracy; and that
in an afuent and democratic world, major conict no longer
needs to be feared or seriously prepared for. This notion,
however, is fast eroding with the return of capitalist non-democratic great
powers that
have been absent from the international system since 1945. Above all, there is
the formerly communist and fast industrializing authoritarian-capitalist China,
whose massive growth represents
the greatest change in the global balance of power. Russia, too, is
retreating from its postcommunist liberalism and assuming an
increasingly authoritarian character. Authoritarian capitalism may be more
viable than people tend to assume. 8 The communist great powers failed even though
they were potentially larger than the democracies, because their economic
systems failed them. By contrast, the capitalist authoritarian/totalitarian
powers during the rst half of the twentieth century, Germany and Japan,
particularly the former, were as efcient economically as, and if anything more
successful militarily than, their democratic counterparts. They were defeated
in war mainly because they were too small and ultimately succumbed to the
exceptional continental size of the United States (in alliance with the
communist Soviet Union during the Second World War). However, the new
non-democratic powers are both large and capitalist. China in particular is the
largest player in the international system in terms of population and is
showing spectacular economic growth that within a generation or two is likely
to make it a true non-democratic superpower. Although the return of
capitalist non-democratic great powers does not necessarily imply open conict
or war, it might indicate that the democratic hegemony since the Soviet Unions collapse could be short-lived and that a universal democratic peace
may still be far off. The new capitalist authoritarian powers are
deeply integrated into the world economy. They partake of the
development-open-trade-capitalist cause of peace, but not of the liberal
democratic cause. Thus, it is crucially important that any protectionist turn
in the system is avoided so as to prevent a grab for markets and raw materials
such as that which followed the disastrous slide into imperial protectionism
and conict during the rst part of the twentieth century. Of course, the
openness of the world economy does not depend exclusively on the democracies.
In time, China itself might become more protectionist, as it grows wealthier,
its labour costs rise, and its current competitive edge diminishes.
With the possible exception of the sore Taiwan problem, China is likely to be
less restless and revisionist than the territorially conned Germany and Japan
were. Russia, which is still reeling from having lost an empire, may be more
problematic. However, as China grows in power, it is likely to become more
assertive, ex its muscles, and behave like a superpower, even if it
does not become particularly aggressive. The democratic and non-democratic
powers may coexist more or less peacefully, albeit warily, side by side, armed
because of mutual fear and suspicion, as a result of the so-called security
dilemma, and against worst-case scenarios. But there is also the prospect of more antagonistic
relations, accentuated ideological rivalry, potential and actual conict, intensied arms races,
and even new cold wars, with spheres of inuence and opposing coalitions.
Although great power relations will probably vary from those that prevailed during
any of the great twentieth-century conicts, as conditions are never quite the
same, they may vary less than seemed likely only a short while ago.
Washington Post, 14 (Citing a
Freedom House report. In the global struggle for Internet freedom, the
Internet is losing, report finds 12-4-14. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/04/in-the-global-struggle-for-internet-freedom-the-internet-is-losing-report-finds/)
The year 2014 marks the moment
that the world turned its attention to writing laws to govern what happens on
the Internet. And that has not been a great thing, according to an annual
report from the U.S.-based pro-democracy think tank Freedom House. Traditionally, countries eager to crack down on their online critics
largely resorted to blocking Web sites and filtering Internet content, with the
occasional offline harassment of dissidents. But that has changed, in part
because online activists have gotten better at figuring out ways around those
restrictions; Freedom House points to Greatfire, a service that takes content
blocked in mainland China and hosts it on big, global platforms, like Amazon's
servers, that the Chinese government finds both politically and technologically
difficult to block. In the wake of these tactics, repressive regimes have begun opting for a "technically uncensored Internet," Freedom House finds, but one
that is increasingly controlled by national laws
about what can and can't be done online. In 36 of the 65 countries surveyed
around the world the state of Internet freedom declined in 2014, according
to the report. Russia, for example, passed a law
that allows the country's prosecutor general to block "extremist" Web
sites without any judicial oversight. Kazakstan passed a similar law. Vietnam
passed decrees cracking down on any critiques of the state on social media
sites. Nigeria passed a law requiring that Internet cafes keep logs of the
customers who come into their shops and use their computers. There's a bigger
worry at work, too, Freedom House says: the potential for a "snowball effect."
More and more countries, the thinking goes, will adopt these sorts of
restrictive laws. And the more that such laws are put in place, the more they
fall within the range of acceptable global norms. Also
shifting those norms? According to Freedom House, "Some states are using the revelations of widespread
surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as an excuse to augment
their own monitoring capabilities, frequently with little or no oversight, and
often aimed at the political opposition and human rights activists."
Gross 13 (12/5/13; Grant
Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG
News Service) The NSA scandal has damaged U.S. credibility online http://www.computerworld.com/article/2486546/internet/the-nsa-scandal-has-damaged-u-s--credibility-online.html
(xo1)
The U.S. government has a huge image problem worldwide as it promotes Internet
freedom on one hand and conducts mass surveillance on the other,
potentially creating major problems for U.S. technology
companies, a former official with President
Barack Obama's administration said Thursday. Many U.S.
policy makers don't recognize the level of distrust created by recent
revelations about U.S. National Security Agency
surveillance, and that lack of trust will drive
other countries away from U.S. technology firms,
said Andrew McLaughlin, former White House deputy CTO. "We, as an advocate
for freedom of speech and privacy worldwide, are much, much, much more screwed
than we generally think in Washington, and ... American industry and our
Internet sector is more much, much, much more screwed than we think
internationally," McLaughlin said during a speech at a Human Rights First
summit in Washington, D.C. Many overseas critics of
the U.S. see the Obama administration's
push for Internet freedom as "profoundly
hypocritical" in the face of the NSA surveillance revelations and a continued push by U.S. trade officials
to have U.S. trading partners filter the Internet to protect against copyright
violations, said McLaughlin, now president of Digg, the online news
aggregation service. The NSA surveillance has led to an intense "level of
anger and the degree of betrayal" in many countries that U.S. policy
makers don't seem to fully appreciate, he said. And many countries have begun
to explore other options beyond U.S. technology companies because of the
surveillance revelations, he added. There's now a
perception outside the U.S. that the country's technology companies "are
willing instruments of violation of civil rights and civil liberties,"
McLaughlin said. "We have essentially nationalized what were previously
seen as stateless Internet entities." Many
countries will move to use domestic technology companies and require citizen
data to stay within their borders, he said. "If you're an American
company that sells cloud services, I think you've probably sold your last
contract to a foreign government," he said. But Phil Verveer, former U.S.
coordinator for information policy at the U.S. Department of State, disagreed
that the U.S. government is being hypocritical when promoting Internet freedom
and conducting surveillance. While there's some overlap of the issues, the
existence of surveillance does not cut off the freedom of speech on the
Internet, said Verveer, now a senior advisor at the U.S. Federal Communications
Commission. "One can recognize ... there is a very large difference
between censorship and spying," Verveer said. "On some level, we know
that spying and espionage is going to take place. This still doesn't mean we
are recommending censorship." But surveillance
does make Internet users think twice about what
opinions to express, said Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior research fellow at
the New America Foundation and cofounder of Global Voices Online. She called on
the U.S. government to embrace the human rights of all Internet users, whether
or not they live in the U.S. "The rights of all Google users, no matter
where they live, have to be protected equally if Google is going to be a
successful globally," she said. "Despite the fact that [McLaughlin's]
former colleagues at the NSA may have been fairly scrupulous about protecting
the civil liberties of U.S. persons, they had no mandate to give a fig about
non-U.S. persons' rights to privacy or rights to anything else."
Heaberlin 04 (Scott W,
Nuclear Safety and Technology Applications Product Line @ Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory, A Case for Nuclear-Generated Electricity, Battelle
Press, 2004 *** we dont endorse the gendered language if any in this card)
Cohen looked at all the various population estimates and
concluded that most fell into the range of 4 to 16 billion. Taking the highest
value when researchers offered a range, Cohen calculated a high median of 12
billion and taking the lower part of the range a low median of 7.7 billion. The
good news in this is 12 billion is twice as many people as we have now. The bad
news is that the projections for world population
for 2050 are between 7.8 and 12.5 billion.
That means we have got no more than 50 years before we exceed the nominal
carrying capacity of the earth. Cohen also offers a qualifying
observation by stating the "First Law of Information," which asserts
that 97.6% of all statistics are made up. This helps
us appreciate that application of these numbers to real life is subject to a
lot of assumptions and insufficiencies in our understanding of the processes
and data. However, we can draw some insights from all of this. What it comes
down to is that if you choose the fully sustainable, non-fossil fuel long-term
options with only limited social integration, the various estimates
Cohen looked at give you a number like 1 billion or less people that the earth
can support. That means 5 out of 6 of us have got to
go, plus no new babies without an offsetting death. On the other hand, if you let technology continue to do its thing and perhaps get even better, the
picture need not be so bleak. We haven't made all our farmland as productive as
it can be. Remember, the Chinese get twice
the food value per hectare as we do in the United States. There is also a lot of land that would become arable if we
could get water to it. And, of course, in case you need to go back and
check the title of this book, there are alternatives to fossil fuels to provide
the energy to power that technology. So given a positive and perhaps optimistic
view of technology, we can look to some of the high technology assumption based
studies from Cohen's review. From the semi-credible set of these, we can find
estimates from 19 to 157 billion as the number of people the earth could
support with a rough average coming in about 60 billion. This is a good time to
be reminded of the First Law of Information. The middle to lower end of this
range, however, might be done without wholesale social reprogramming. Hopefully
we would see the improvement in the quality of life in the developing countries
as they industrialize and increase their use of energy. Hopefully, also this
would lead to a matching of the reduction in fertility rates that has been
observed in the developed countries, which in turn would lead to an eventual
balancing of the human population. The point to all
this is the near-term future of the human race depends on technology. If we
turn away from technology, a very large fraction of the current and future
human race will starve. If we just keep on as we are, with our current
level of technology and dependence on fossil fuel resources, in the near term
it will be a race between fertility decrease and our ability to feed ourselves,
with, frankly, disaster the slight odds-on bet. In a slightly longer term,
dependence on fossil fuels has got to lead to
either social chaos or environmental disaster. There
are no other end points to that road. It doesn't go anywhere else.
However, if we accept that it is technology that
makes us human, that technology uniquely identifies us as the only animal that
can choose its future, we can choose to live, choose to make it a better world
for everyone and all life. This means more and better technology. It means more
efficient technology that is kinder to the planet but also allows humans
to support large numbers in a high quality of life. That road is not easy and
has a number of ways to screw up. However, it is a road that can lead to a
happier place, a better place.
Eagleman 10
[David Eagleman is
a neuroscientist at Baylor College
of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the
Initiative on Neuroscience and Law and author of Sum (Canongate). Nov. 9, 2010,
Six ways the internet will save civilization,
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/12/start/apocalypse-no]
Many great civilisations have fallen, leaving nothing but cracked ruins and
scattered genetics. Usually this results from:
natural disasters, resource depletion, economic meltdown, disease,
poor information flow and corruption. But were luckier than our predecessors because we command a technology that no one else possessed: a
rapid communication network that finds its highest expression in the internet. I propose that there are six ways in
which the net has vastly reduced the threat
of societal collapse. Epidemics can be deflected by telepresence One of our more dire prospects for
collapse is an infectious-disease epidemic.
Viral and bacterial epidemics precipitated the fall of the Golden Age of
Athens, the Roman Empire
and most of the empires of the Native Americans. The internet can be our key to survival because the
ability to work telepresently can inhibit microbial transmission by reducing
human-to-human contact. In
the face of an otherwise devastating epidemic, businesses can keep supply
chains running with the maximum number of employees working from home. This can
reduce host density below the tipping point required for an epidemic. If we are well prepared when an epidemic arrives, we can
fluidly shift into a self-quarantined society in which microbes fail due to host scarcity. Whatever the social ills
of isolation, they are worse for the microbes than for us. The internet will predict natural disasters We are
witnessing the downfall of slow central control in the media: news stories are increasingly
becoming user-generated nets of up-to-the-minute information. During the recent California wildfires, locals went to the TV stations to
learn whether their neighbourhoods were in danger. But the news stations
appeared most concerned with the fate of celebrity mansions, so Californians
changed their tack: they uploaded geotagged mobile-phone pictures, updated
Facebook statuses and tweeted. The balance tipped: the internet carried news about the fire more quickly and
accurately than any news station could. In this grass-roots, decentralised scheme, there were embedded
reporters on every block, and the news shockwave kept ahead of the fire. This
head start could provide the extra hours that save us. If the Pompeiians had
had the internet in 79AD, they could have easily marched 10km to safety, well
ahead of the pyroclastic flow from Mount Vesuvius. If the Indian Ocean had the Pacifics networked
tsunami-warning system, South-East Asia would look quite different today.
Discoveries are retained and shared Historically, critical information has required constant rediscovery. Collections of learning -- from the
library at Alexandria to the entire Minoan civilisation -- have fallen to the
bonfires of invaders or the wrecking ball of natural disaster. Knowledge is
hard won but easily lost. And information that survives often does not spread. Consider smallpox inoculation: this was under way in India, China
and Africa centuries before it made its way to Europe. By the time the idea reached North America, native
civilisations who needed it had already collapsed. The net solved the problem. New discoveries catch on immediately; information spreads widely. In this
way, societies can optimally ratchet up, using the latest bricks of knowledge
in their fortification against risk. Tyranny
is mitigated Censorship
of ideas was a
familiar spectre in the last century, with state-approved news outlets ruling
the press, airwaves and copying machines in
the USSR, Romania, Cuba,
China, Iraq and elsewhere. In many cases, such as Lysenkos
agricultural despotism in the USSR, it directly
contributed to the collapse of the nation. Historically, a more successful
strategy has been to confront free speech with free speech -- and the internet
allows this in a natural way. It democratises the flow of information by offering access to the
newspapers of the world, the photographers of every nation, the bloggers of
every political stripe. Some posts are full of doctoring and dishonesty whereas
others strive for independence and impartiality -- but all are available to us
to sift through. Given the attempts by some governments to build firewalls,
its clear that this benefit of the net requires constant vigilance. Human capital is vastly increased
Crowdsourcing brings people together to solve
problems. Yet far
fewer than one per cent of the worlds population is involved. We need expand
human capital. Most of the world not have access to the education afforded a
small minority. For every Albert Einstein, Yo-Yo Ma or Barack Obama who has
educational opportunities, uncountable others do not. This squandering of
talent translates into reduced economic output and a smaller pool of problem
solvers. The net opens the gates education to
anyone with a computer. A
motivated teen anywhere on the planet can walk through the worlds knowledge --
from the webs of Wikipedia to the curriculum of MITs OpenCourseWare. The new human capital will serve us well when we
confront existential threats weve never imagined before. Energy expenditure is reduced Societal collapse can often be
understood in terms of an energy budget: when
energy spend outweighs energy return, collapse ensues. This has taken the form of
deforestation or soil erosion; currently, the
worry involves fossil-fuel depletion. The internet addresses the energy problem
with a natural ease.
Consider the massive energy savings inherent in the shift from paper to
electrons -- as seen in the transition from the post to email. Ecommerce reduces the need to drive long distances to
purchase products. Delivery
trucks are more eco-friendly than individuals driving around, not least because of tight packaging
and optimisation algorithms for driving routes. Of course, there are energy
costs to the banks of computers that underpin the internet -- but these costs
are less than the wood, coal and oil that would be expended for the same
quantity of information flow. The tangle
of events that triggers societal collapse can be complex, and there are several threats the net
does not address. But vast, networked
communication can be an antidote to several of the most deadly
diseases threatening civilisation. The next time your coworker laments internet addiction, the banality
of tweeting or the decline of face-to-face conversation, you may want to
suggest that the net may just be the technology that saves us.
Kehl et. al, 14 (Danielle
Kehl is a Policy Analyst at New Americas Open Technology Institute (OTI).
Kevin Bankston is the Policy Director at OTI, Robyn Greene is a Policy Counsel
at OTI, and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI.Surveillance Costs:
The NSAs Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity July
2014. https://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf)
The effects of the NSA
disclosures on the Internet Freedom agenda go beyond the realm of Internet
governance. The loss of the United States as a model on Internet Freedom issues
has made it harder for local civil society groups around the world—including the groups that the State Departments Internet Freedom
programs typically support203—to
advocate for Internet Freedom within their own governments.204 The Committee to Protect
Journalists, for example, reports that in Pakistan, where freedom of
expression is largely perceived as a Western notion, the Snowden revelations
have had a damaging effect. The deeply polarized narrative has become starker
as the corridors of power push back on attempts to curb government surveillance.205 For some of these groups, in fact, even the appearance of collaboration with or support from
the U.S. government can diminish credibility, making it harder for them to
achieve local goals that align with U.S. foreign policy interests.206 The gap in trust is particularly significant for individuals and
organizations that receive funding from the U.S. government for free expression
activities or circumvention tools. Technology supported by or exported from the
United States is, in some cases, inherently suspect due to the revelations
about the NSAs surveillance dragnet and the agencys attempts to covertly
influence product development. Moreover,
revelations of what the NSA has been doing in the past decade are eroding the
moral high ground that the United States has often relied upon when putting
public pressure on authoritarian countries like China, Russia, and Iran to
change their behavior. In 2014, Reporters Without
Borders added the United States to its Enemies of the Internet list for the
first time, explicitly linking the inclusion to NSA surveillance. The main player in [the United States] vast surveillance operation is
the highly secretive National Security Agency (NSA) which, in the light of
Snowdens revelations, has come to symbolize the abuses by the worlds
intelligence agencies, noted the 2014 report.207 The damaged perception of the United States208 as a leader
on Internet Freedom and its diminished ability to legitimately criticize other
countries for censorship and surveillance opens the door for foreign leaders to
justify—and even expand— their own efforts.209 For example, the
Egyptian government recently announced plans to monitor social media for
potential terrorist activity, prompting backlash from a number of advocates for
free expression and privacy.210 When a spokesman for the Egyptian Interior
Ministry, Abdel Fatah Uthman, appeared on television to explain the policy, one
justification that he offered in response to privacy concerns was that the US
listens in to phone calls, and supervises anyone who could threaten its
national security.211 This type of rhetoric makes it difficult for the U.S. to
effectively criticize such a policy. Similarly, Indias comparatively mild
response to allegations of NSA surveillance have been seen by some critics as
a reflection of Indias own aspirations in the world of surveillance, a
further indication that U.S. spying may now make it easier for foreign
governments to quietly defend their own behavior.212 It is
even more difficult for the United States to credibly indict Chinese hackers
for breaking into U.S. government and commercial targets without fear of
retribution in light of the NSA revelations.213 These challenges reflect an
overall decline in U.S. soft power on free expression issues.
Kromah 9, Masters Student
in IR [February 2009, Lamii Moivi Kromah at the Department of International
Relations
University of the Witwatersrand, The Institutional Nature
of U.S. Hegemony: Post 9/11,
http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/7301/MARR%2009.pdf?sequence=1]
A final major gain to the United States from
the benevolent hegemony has
perhaps been less widely appreciated. It nevertheless proved of
great significance in the short as well as in the long term: the pervasive
cultural influence of the United States.39 This
dimension of power base is often neglected. After
World War II the authoritarian political cultures of Europe and Japan were
utterly discredited, and the liberal democratic
elements of those cultures revivified. The revival was most extensive
and deliberate in the occupied powers of the Axis, where it was nurtured by drafting democratic constitutions,
building democratic institutions, curbing the power of industrial trusts
by decartelization and the rebuilding of trade unions, and imprisoning or discrediting much of the wartime leadership. American
liberal ideas largely filled the cultural void. The effect was not so
dramatic in the "victor" states whose regimes were reaffirmed
(Britain, the Low and Scandinavian countries), but even there the United States
and its culture was widely admired. The upper classes may often have thought it
too "commercial," but in many respects American mass consumption
culture was the most pervasive part of America's impact. American styles,
tastes, and middle-class consumption patterns were widely imitated, in a
process that' has come to bear the label "coca-colonization."40 After WWII policy makers in the USA set about remaking
a world to facilitate peace. The hegemonic
project involves using political and economic advantages gained in world war to restructure the
operation of the world market and interstate system in the hegemon's own image.
The interests of the leader are projected on a
universal plane: What is good for the hegemon is good for the world. The
hegemonic state is successful to the degree that other states emulate it.
Emulation is the basis of the consent that
lies at the heart of the hegemonic project.41 Since wealth depended on peace the U.S set about creating institutions and regimes that
promoted free trade, and peaceful conflict resolution. U.S.
benevolent hegemony is what has kept the peace since
the end of WWII. The upshot is that U.S. hegemony and liberalism have
produced the most stable and durable political order that the world has
seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. It is not as formally or highly
integrated as the European Union, but it is just as profound and robust as a
political order, Kants Perpetual Peace requires
that the system be diverse and not monolithic because then tyranny will be the
outcome. As long as the system allows for
democratic states to press claims and resolve conflicts, the system will
perpetuate itself peacefully. A state such as the United States that has achieved international primacy has every reason
to attempt to maintain that primacy through peaceful means so as to preclude
the need of having to fight a war to maintain it.42 This view of the post-hegemonic Western world does
not put a great deal of emphasis on U.S. leadership in the traditional sense. U.S.
leadership takes the form of providing the venues and mechanisms for articulating demands and resolving disputes
not unlike the character of politics within domestic pluralistic systems.43 America
as a big and powerful state has
an incentive to organize and manage a political order that is considered legitimate
by the other states. It is not in a hegemonic
leader's interest to preside over a global order that requires constant use of
material capabilities to get other states to go along. Legitimacy exists when political order is based on
reciprocal consent. It emerges when secondary states
buy into rules and norms of the political order as a matter of principle,
and not simply because they are forced into it. But if
a hegemonic power wants to encourage the emergence of a legitimate political
order, it must articulate principles and norms, and engage in
negotiations and compromises that have very little to do with the exercise of
power.44 So should this hegemonic power be called leadership, or domination?
Well, it would tend toward the latter. Hierarchy has not gone away from this
system. Core states have peripheral areas: colonial empires and neo-colonial
backyards. Hegemony, in other words, involves a structure in which there is a
hegemonic core power. The problem with calling this hegemonic power
"leadership" is that leadership is a wonderful thing-everyone needs leadership.
But sometimes I have notice that leadership is also an ideology that
legitimates domination and exploitation. In fact, this is often the case. But
this is a different kind of domination than in earlier systems. Its difference
can be seen in a related question: is it progressive? Is it evolutionary in the
sense of being better for most people in the system? I think it actually is a
little bit better. The trickle down effect is bigger-it is not very big, but it
is bigger.45 It is to this theory, Hegemonic Stability that the glass slipper
properly belongs, because both U.S. security and
economic strategies fit the expectations of hegemonic stability theory more
comfortably than they do other realist theories. We must first discuss
the three pillars that U.S. hegemony rests on structural, institutional, and
situational. (1) Structural leadership refers to the underlying distribution of
material capabilities that gives some states the ability to direct the overall
shape of world political order. Natural resources, capital, technology,
military force, and economic size are the characteristics that shape state
power, which in turn determine the capacities for leadership and hegemony. If
leadership is rooted in the distribution of power, there is reason to worry
about the present and future. The relative decline of the United States has not
been matched by the rise of another hegemonic leader. At its hegemonic zenith
after World War II, the United States commanded roughly forty five percent of
world production. It had a remarkable array of natural resource, financial,
agricultural, industrial, and technological assets. America in 1945 or 1950 was
not just hegemonic because it had a big economy or a huge military; it had an
unusually wide range of resources and capabilities. This situation may never
occur again. As far as one looks into the next century, it is impossible to see
the emergence of a country with a similarly commanding power position. (2) Institutional leadership refers to the rules and practices
that states agree to that set in place principles and procedures that guide
their relations. It is not power capabilities as such or the
interventions of specific states that facilitate concerted action, but the rules and mutual expectations that are established as
institutions. Institutions are, in a
sense, self-imposed constraints that states create
to assure continuity in their relations and to facilitate the realization of
mutual interests. A common theme of recent discussions of the management
of the world economy is that institutions will need to play a greater role in
the future in providing leadership in the absence of American hegemony.
Bergsten argues, for example, that "institutions
themselves will need to play a much more important
role.46 Institutional management is important and can generate results
that are internationally greater than the sum of their national parts. The
argument is not that international institutions
impose outcomes on states, but that institutions shape and constrain how states
conceive and pursue their interests and policy goals. They provide
channels and mechanisms to reach agreements. They set standards and mutual
expectations concerning how states should act. They
"bias" politics in internationalist directions just as, presumably,
American hegemonic leadership does. (3) Situational leadership refers to the
actions and initiatives of states that induce cooperation quite apart from the
distribution of power or the array of institutions. It is more cleverness or
the ability to see specific opportunities to build or reorient international
political order, rather than the power capacities of the state, that makes a
difference. In this sense, leadership really is expressed in a specific
individual-in a president or foreign minister-as he or she sees a new opening,
a previously unidentified passage forward, a new way to define state interests,
and thereby transforms existing relations. Hegemonic stability theorists argue
that international politics is characterized by a succession of hegemonies in
which a single powerful state dominates the system as a result of its victory
in the last hegemonic war.47 Especially after the cold war America can be
described as trying to keep its position at the top but also integrating others
more thoroughly in the international system that it dominates. It is assumed
that the differential growth of power in a state system would undermine the
status quo and lead to hegemonic war between declining and rising powers48, but
I see a different pattern: the U.S. hegemonic stability promoting liberal
institutionalism, the events following 9/11 are a brief abnormality from
this path, but the general trend will be toward
institutional liberalism. Hegemonic states are the crucial
components in military alliances that turn back the major threats to
mutual sovereignties and hence political domination of the system.
Instead of being territorially aggressive and eliminating other states,
hegemons respect other's territory. They aspire to be leaders and hence are
upholders of inter-stateness and inter-territoriality.49 The nature of the institutions themselves must,
however, be examined. They were shaped in the years
immediately after World War II by the United States. The American willingness
to establish institutions, the World Bank to
deal with finance and trade, United Nations to
resolve global conflict, NATO to provide
security for Western Europe, is explained in
terms of the theory of collective goods. It is commonplace in the
regimes literature that the United States,
in so doing, was providing not only private goods
for its own benefit but also (and perhaps especially) collective goods desired by, and for the benefit
of, other capitalist states and members of the
international system in general. (Particular care is needed here about
equating state interest with "national" interest.) Not only was the United States protecting its own territory and
commercial enterprises, it was providing military
protection for some fifty allies and almost as many neutrals. Not only
was it ensuring a liberal, open, near-global economy for its own prosperity, it was providing the basis for the prosperity of all
capitalist states and even for some states organized on noncapitalist
principles (those willing to abide by the basic rules established to govern
international trade and finance). While such behaviour was not exactly selfless
or altruistic, certainly the benefits-however distributed by class, state, or
region-did accrue to many others, not just to Americans.50 For the truth about
U.S. dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed international
observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised
by the United States is good
for a vast portion of the world's population. It is
certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives.
To undermine it would cost many others around the world far more than it would
cost Americans-and far sooner. As Samuel Huntington wrote five years ago,
before he joined the plethora of scholars disturbed by the
"arrogance" of American hegemony; "A world without U.S. primacy will be
a world with more violence and
disorder and less
democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States
continues to have more influence than any other country shaping global
affairs. 51 I argue that the overall
American-shaped system is still in place. It is this macro political system-a
legacy of American power and its liberal polity that
remains and serves to foster agreement and consensus. This is precisely what
people want when they look for U.S. leadership and hegemony.52 If the
U.S. retreats from its hegemonic role, who would supplant it, not Europe, not
China, not the Muslim world –and certainly not the United Nations.
Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia, but the anarchic nightmare of a
New Dark Age. Moreover, the alternative to unipolarity
would not be
multipolarity at all. It would be
apolarity –a global vacuum of power.53 Since the end of
WWII the United States has been the clear and
dominant leader politically, economically and military. But its leadership as been unique; it has not been tyrannical, its
leadership and hegemony has focused on relative gains and has forgone absolute
gains. The difference lies in the exercise of power. The strength acquired by the United States in the
aftermath of World War II was far greater than any single nation had
ever possessed, at least since the Roman Empire. America's share of the world
economy, the overwhelming superiority of its military capacity-augmented for a
time by a monopoly of nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them--gave it
the choice of pursuing any number of global ambitions. That the American people
"might have set the crown of world empire on their brows," as one
British statesman put it in 1951, but chose not to, was a decision of singular
importance in world history and recognized as such.54 Leadership is really an
elegant word for power. To exercise leadership is to
get others to do things that they would not otherwise do. It involves the
ability to shape, directly or indirectly, the interests or actions of others. Leadership may involve the
ability to not just "twist arms" but also to get other states to
conceive of their interests and policy goals in new ways. This suggests
a second element of leadership, which involves not just the marshalling of
power capabilities and material resources. It
also involves the ability to project a set of political ideas or principles
about the proper or effective ordering of po1itics. It suggests the ability to
produce concerted or collaborative actions by several states or other actors.
Leadership is the use of power to orchestrate the
actions of a group toward a collective end.55 By validating regimes and
norms of international behaviour the U.S. has given
incentives for actors, small and large, in the international arena to behave peacefully. The uni-polar U.S. dominated order
has led to a stable international system. Woodrow Wilsons zoo
of managed relations among states as supposed to his jungle method of constant
conflict. The U.S. through various international treaties and organizations as
become a quasi world government; It resolves the problem of provision by
imposing itself as a centralized authority able to extract the equivalent of
taxes. The focus of the theory thus shifts from the ability to provide a public
good to the ability to coerce other states. A benign hegemon in this sense
coercion should be understood as benign and not tyrannical. If significant continuity
in the ability of the United States to get what it wants is accepted, then it
must be explained. The explanation starts with our noting that the institutions
for political and economic cooperation have themselves been maintained. Keohane
rightly stresses the role of institutions as "arrangements permitting
communication and therefore facilitating the exchange of information. By
providing reliable information and reducing the costs of transactions, institutions can permit cooperation to continue even
after a hegemon's influence has eroded. Institutions
provide opportunities for commitment and for observing whether others keep
their commitments. Such opportunities
are virtually essential to cooperation in non-zero-sum
situations, as gaming experiments demonstrate. Declining
hegemony and stagnant (but not decaying) institutions
may therefore be consistent with a stable provision of desired
outcomes, although the ability to promote new
levels of cooperation to deal with new problems (e.g., energy supplies,
environmental protection) is more problematic.
Institutions nevertheless provide a part of the necessary explanation.56 In
restructuring the world after WWII it was America that was the prime motivator
in creating and supporting the various international organizations in the
economic and conflict resolution field. An example of this is NATOs making
Western Europe secure for the unification of Europe. It was through NATO
institutionalism that the countries in Europe where able to start the
unification process. The U.S. working through NATO provided the security and
impetus for a conflict prone region to unite and benefit from greater
cooperation. Since the United States emerged as a great power, the
identification of the interests of others with its own has been the most
striking quality of American foreign and defence policy. Americans seem to have
internalized and made second nature a conviction held only since World War II:
Namely, that their own wellbeing depends fundamentally on the well-being of
others; that American prosperity cannot occur in the absence of global
prosperity; that American freedom depends on the survival and spread of freedom
elsewhere; that aggression anywhere threatens the danger of aggression
everywhere; and that American national security is impossible without a broad
measure of international security. 57 I see a multi-polar world as
one being filled with
instability and higher chances of great power conflict. The Great Power jostling and British hegemonic decline that led to WWI is an example
of how multi polar systems are prone to great power wars. I further
posit that U.S. hegemony is significantly
different from the past British hegemony because of its reliance on consent and
its mutilaterist nature. The most significant would be the UN and its
various branches financial, developmental, and conflict resolution. It is
common for the international system to go through cataclysmic changes with the
fall of a great power. I feel that American hegemony is so
different especially with its reliance on liberal institutionalism and complex
interdependence that U.S. hegemonic order and governance will be maintained by
others, if states vary in size, then cooperation between the largest of the
former free riders (and including the declining hegemonic power) may suffice to
preserve the cooperative outcome. Thus we need to amend the assumption that
collective action is impossible and incorporate it into a fuller specification
of the circumstances under which international cooperation can be preserved
even as a hegemonic power declines.58 If hegemony means the ability to
foster cooperation and commonalty of social purpose among states, U.S.
leadership and its institutional creations will long outlast the decline of its
post war position of military and economic dominance; and it will outlast the foreign policy stumbling of
particular administrations.59 U.S. hegemony will continue providing the
public good that the world is associated with despite the rise of other powers
in the system cooperation may persist after
hegemonic decline because of the inertia of existing regimes.
Institutional factors and different logics of regime creation and maintenance
have been invoked to explain the failure of the current economic regime to
disintegrate rapidly in response to the decline of American predominance in
world affairs.60 Since the end of WWII the majority
of the states that are represented in the core have come to depend on the security that U.S. hegemony has
provided, so although they have their own national interest, they forgo short term gains to maintain U.S. hegemony.
Why would other states forgo a leadership role to a foreign hegemon because it
is in their interests; one particularly ambitious application is Gilpin's
analysis of war and hegemonic stability. He argues that the presence of a
hegemonic power is central to the preservation of stability and peace in
the international system. Much of Gilpin's argument resembles his own and
Krasner's earlier thesis that hegemonic states provide an international order
that furthers their own self-interest. Gilpin now elaborates the thesis with
the claim that international order is a public good,
benefiting subordinate states. This is, of course, the essence of the
theory of hegemonic stability. But Gilpin adds a novel twist: the dominant
power not only provides the good, it is capable of extracting contributions
toward the good from subordinate states. In effect, the hegemonic power
constitutes a quasigovernment by providing public goods and taxing other states
to pay for them. Subordinate states will be reluctant to be taxed but, because
of the hegemonic state's preponderant power, will succumb. Indeed, if they receive net benefits (i.e., a surplus of
public good benefits over the contribution extracted from them), they may
recognize hegemonic leadership as legitimate and so reinforce its performance
and position. During the 19th century several countries benefited from
British hegemony particularly its rule of the seas, since WWII the U.S. has also provided a similar stability and security
that as made smaller powers thrive in the international system. The
model presumes that the (military) dominance of the hegemonic state, which
gives it the capacity to enforce an international order, also gives it an
interest in providing a generally beneficial order so as to lower the costs of
maintaining that order and perhaps to facilitate its ability to extract
contributions from other members of the system.
Knowles 9 (Robert, Acting
assistant Professor, New York University School of Law, American Hegemony and
the Foreign Affairs Constitution, Arizona State Law Journal, 41 Ariz. St. L.J.
87, October)
International relations scholars
are still struggling to define the current era. The U.S.-led international order is unipolar,
hegemonic, and, in some ways, imperial. In any event, this order diverges from traditional realist assumptions in
important respects. It is unipolar, but stable. It is more hierarchical. The
U.S. is not the same as other states; it performs unique functions in the world
and has a government open and accessible to foreigners. And the stability and legitimacy of the system depends
more on
successful functioning of
the U.S. government as
a whole than it does on
balancing alliances
crafted by elite statesmen practicing realpolitik. [W]orld
power politics are shaped primarily not by the structure created by interstate
anarchy but by the foreign policy developed in Washington.368 These
differences require a new model for assessing the institutional competences of
the executive and judicial branches in foreign affairs. One approach would be
to adapt an institutional competence model using insights from a major
alternative theory of international relations – liberalism. Liberal IR
theory generally holds that internal characteristics of states – in
particular, the form of government – dictate states behavior, and that
democracies do not go to war against one another.369 Liberalists also regard
economic interdependence and international institutions as important for
maintaining peace and stability in the world.370 Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter has
proposed a binary model that distinguishes between liberal, democratic states
and non-democratic states.371 Because domestic and foreign issues are more
convergent among liberal democracies, Slaughter reasons, the courts should
decide issues concerning the scope of the political branches powers.372 With
respect to non-liberal states, the position of the U.S. is more realist, and
courts should deploy a high level of deference.373 A strength of Dean Slaughters
binary approach is that it would tend to reduce the uncertainty in foreign
affairs adjudication. Professor Nzelibe has criticized this approach because it
would put courts in the difficult position of determining which countries are
liberal democracies.374 But even if courts are capable of making these
determinations, they would still face the same dilemmas adjudicating
controversies regarding non-liberal states. Where is the appropriate boundary
between foreign affairs and domestic matters? How much discretion should be
afforded the executive when individual rights and accountability values are at
stake? To resolve these dilemmas, an institutional competence model should be
applicable to foreign affairs adjudication across the board. In constructing a new
realist model, it is worth recalling that the functional justifications for
special deference are aimed at addressing problems of a particular sort of role
effectiveness—which allocation of power among the branches will best
achieve general governmental effectiveness in foreign affairs. In the 21st
Century, Americas global role has changed, and the best means of achieving
effectiveness in foreign affairs have changed as well. The international realm
remains highly political—if not as much as in the past— but it is
American politics that matters most. If the U.S. is truly an empire— and
in some respects it is—the problems of imperial management will be far
different from the problems of managing relations with one other great power or
many great powers. Similarly, the management of hegemony or unipolarity
requires a different set of competences. Although American predominance is
recognized as a salient fact, there is no consensus among realists about the
precise nature of the current international order.375 The hegemonic model I
offer here adopts common insights from the three IR frameworks—unipolar,
hegemonic, and imperial—described above. First, the hybrid hegemonic model assumes that the goal of U.S.
foreign affairs should be the preservation of American hegemony, which is
more stable, more peaceful,
and better for
Americas security and
prosperity, than the
alternatives. If the United States were to
withdraw from its global leadership role, no other nation would be capable of taking its place.376
The result would be
radical instability and a greater risk of major war.377 In
addition, the United States would no longer benefit from the public goods it
had formerly produced; as the largest consumer, it would suffer the most.
Second, the hegemonic model assumes that American hegemony is unusually stable
and durable.378 As noted above, other nations have many incentives to continue
to tolerate the current order.379 And although other nations or groups of
nations—China, the European Union, and India are often
mentioned—may eventually overtake the United States in certain areas,
such as manufacturing, the U.S. will remain dominant in most measures of
capability for decades to come. In 2025, the U.S. economy is projected to be
twice the size of Chinas.380 The U.S. accounted for half of the worlds
military spending in 2007 and holds enormous advantages in defense technology
that far outstrip would-be competitors.381 Predictions
of American decline are not new, and they have thus far proved premature.382
Third, the hegemonic model assumes that preservation of American
hegemony depends not
just on power, but legitimacy.383 All three IR
frameworks for describing predominant states—although unipolarity less
than hegemony or empire—suggest that legitimacy is crucial to the stability and durability of
the system. Although empires and predominant states in unipolar systems can conceivably maintain their position through
the use of force, this is much
more likely to exhaust the resources of the predominant state and to lead to counter-balancing or the loss of control.384 Legitimacy as a method of
maintaining predominance is
far more efficient. The
hegemonic model generally values courts institutional competences more than the anarchic realist model. The courts strengths in offering
a stable interpretation
of the law, relative insulation
from political pressure,
and power to bestow legitimacy are important for realizing the
functional constitutional goal of effective U.S. foreign policy. This means that courts treatment
of deference in foreign affairs will, in most respects, resemble its treatment
of domestic affairs. Given the amorphous quality of foreign affairs deference,
this domestication reduces uncertainty. The increasing boundary problems
caused by the proliferation of treaties and the infiltration of domestic law by
foreign affairs issues are lessened by reducing the deference gap. And the
dilemma caused by the need to weigh different functional
considerations—liberty, accountability, and effectiveness—against one
another is made less intractable because it becomes part of the same project
that the courts constantly grapple with in adjudicating domestic disputes.
Buttar, 15 (Shahid, executive director, leads the Bill of Rights Defense Committee
in its efforts to restore civil liberties, constitutional rights, and rule of
law principles undermined by law enforcement and intelligence agencies within
the United States. 4-18-15. http://www.occupy.com/article/can-surveillance-state-repeal-act-shift-course-spying)
Eager to reset the debate and
anchor it in long overdue transparency, a bipartisan block of representatives have introduced a
bill to restore civil liberties, privacy, and freedom of thought. The
Surveillance State Repeal Act, HR 1466, would do this by repealing the twin pillars of
the NSA dragnet: the PATRIOT Act (not only
the three expiring provisions) and the
2008 FISA amendments. On multiple occasions, executive
officials have lied under oath to congressional oversight committees about the
scope of domestic surveillance. Yet the very same officials still appear in
oversight hearings as if they maintained any credibility. It took
whistleblowers resigning their careers to prove that senior government
officials blithe assurances to Congress were in fact self-serving lies. Some
members of Congress paid attention: the authors of the PATRIOT Act moved to
curtail their own legislative opus, and have encouraged their colleagues not to
reauthorize the expiring provisions unless they are first curtailed. HR 1466 (the SSRA) represents a profound challenge by members of Congress
from across the political spectrum fed up with the national security establishment and its continuing
assault on our Constitution. By repealing the twin pillars of the
surveillance dragnet, the
SSRA would essentially shift the burden of proof, forcing intelligence agencies
like the NSA and FBI to
justify the expansion of their powers from a constitutional baseline,
rather then the illegitimate status quo. Most
policymakers forget the 9/11 commissions most crucial finding: the
intelligence community's failures that enabled the 9/11 attacks were not
failures of limited data collection, but rather failures of data sharing and analysis. Over
the last 15 years, Congress has allowed the agencies to expand their collection
capacities, solving an imaginary problem while creating a host of real threats
to U.S. national security far worse than any act of rogue violence: the specter
of state omniscience, immune from oversight and
accountability, and thus vulnerable to politicization. This was among the fears
of which President Eisenhower warned us in his last speech as President. Meanwhile, the SSRA would preserve what the PATRIOT Acts authors have said they
meant to authorize: targeted investigations of particular people suspected by
authorities to present potential threats. HR 1466
would also advance transparency, both by protecting conscientious
whistleblowers from the corrupt retaliation of agencies and careerists, and by
giving judges on the secret FISA court access to technical expertise they have
been denied. Finally, the bill would directly
address disturbing government duplicity, prohibiting agencies from
hacking encryption hardware and software, and from using an executive order authorizing foreign
surveillance as a basis to monitor Americans.
Clabough, 15 (Raven, writer for The New American, M.A. University of Albany. House
Members Target Patriot Act with "Surveillance State Repeal Act, 3-31-15.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/20560-house-members-target-patriot-act-with-surveillance-state-repeal-act)
U.S. Representatives Mark Pocan
(D-Wis., photo on left) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.),
who are seeking to repeal the PATRIOT Act in its entirety and combat any legal
provisions that amount to American spying, unveiled their Surveillance State Repeal Act on Tuesday.
This isnt just tinkering
around the edges, Pocan said during a Capitol Hill briefing on the
legislation. This is a
meaningful overhaul of the system, getting rid of essentially all parameters of
the PATRIOT Act. The PATRIOT Act contains many provisions that violate the
Fourth Amendment and have led to a dramatic expansion of our domestic
surveillance state, added Massie (R-Ky.), who
co-authored the legislation with Pocan. Our Founding Fathers fought and died
to stop the kind of warrantless spying and searches that the PATRIOT Act and
the FISA Amendments Act authorize. It is long past time to repeal the PATRIOT
Act and reassert the constitutional rights of all Americans. The House bill
would completely repeal the PATRIOT Act, passed in the days following the 9/11
attacks, as well as the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which permits the NSA to
collect Internet communications — a program exposed by former NSA
contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden. Likewise, the bill would reform the court that oversees the nations spying
powers, enhance protections for whistleblowers, and stop the government from
forcing technology companies to create easy access into their devices. The warrantless collection of millions of personal communications from
innocent Americans is a direct violation of our constitutional right to
privacy, declared Congressman Pocan, adding, Revelations about the NSAs
programs reveal the extraordinary extent to which the program has invaded
Americans privacy. I reject the notion that we must sacrifice liberty for
security. We can live in a secure nation which also upholds a strong commitment
to civil liberties. Massie stated, Really, what we need are new whistleblower
protections so that the next Edward Snowden doesnt have to go to Russia or
Hong Kong or whatever the case may be just for disclosing this." According
to The Hill, the bill is not likely to gain much traction, as leaders in
Congress have been worried that even much milder reforms to the nations
spying laws would tragically handicap the nations ability to fight
terrorists. A 2013 Surveillance State Repeal Act never
picked up any momentum, and even bills with smaller ambitions have
failed to gain passage. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced the USA Freedom Act in 2014,
which sought to curtail the amount of mass surveillance that could be performed
by the NSA and other groups. As predicted, however, the bill was dramatically watered down during
the consensus process. The White House signaled its
strong support for the bill only after privacy protections and transparency
provisions were substantially weakened. Privacy
advocates who once supported the USA Freedom Act were dismayed by its
transformation into a consensus bill, which no longer prevented the NSA
or FBI from warrantlessly
sifting through international communications databases. Some critics
even argued that the USA Freedom Act in its final form would have expanded NSA
authorities because of its vague wording about what constituted a connection
between call records.
#
Kibbe, 15 (Matt, President and CEO of
FreedomWorks, previously worked as Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Dan
Miller (R-FL), Senior Economist at the Republican National Committee, Director
of Federal Budget Policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Managing Editor
of Market Process. 3-24-15. Letter in Support of the Surveillance State Repeal
Act
http://www.freedomworks.org/content/letter-support-surveillance-state-repeal-act)
The Surveillance State Repeal Act
would repeal the misguided USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. The
PATRIOT Act, passed in the panicked aftermath of the tragic
September 11th attacks, gives the
federal government an unprecedented amount of power to monitor the private
communications of U.S. citizens without a warrant. The FISA Amendments Act of
2008 expanded the wiretapping program to grant the
government more power. Both laws
clearly violate our 4th Amendment right against unreasonable searches.
The Surveillance State Repeal Act
would prohibit the government from collecting information on U.S. citizens
obtained through private communications without a warrant. It would mandate
that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) regularly monitor domestic
surveillance programs for compliance with the law and issue an annual report. A
section of the bill explicitly forbids the government from mandating that
electronic manufacturers install back door spy software into their products.
This is a legitimate concern due to a recently released security report finding
government spying software on hard drives in personal computers in the United
States.
Its important to note that the Surveillance State
Repeal Act saves anti-terrorism tools that are useful to law enforcement. It
retains the ability for government surveillance capabilities against targeted
individuals, regardless of the type of communications methods or
devices being used. It would also protect intelligence collection practices
involving foreign targets for the purpose of investigating weapons of mass
destruction.
U.S. Congress, 14 (Summary:
H.R.2818 — 113th Congress
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/2818)
Surveillance State Repeal Act -
Repeals the USA PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (thereby restoring or reviving provisions amended or repealed by such
Acts as if such Acts had not been enacted), except with respect to reports to
Congress regarding court orders under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
of 1978 (FISA) and the acquisition of intelligence information concerning an
entity not substantially composed of U.S. persons that is engaged in the
international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Extends from 7 to 10 years the maximum term of FISA
judges. Makes such judges eligible for redesignation.
Permits FISA courts to appoint special masters to
advise on technical issues raised during proceedings.
Requires orders approving certain electronic
surveillance to direct that, upon request of the applicant, any person or
entity must furnish all information, facilities, or technical assistance
necessary to accomplish such surveillance in a manner to protect its secrecy and
produce a minimum of interference with the services that such carrier,
landlord, custodian, or other person is providing the target of such
surveillance (thereby retaining the ability to conduct surveillance on such
targets regardless of the type of communications methods or devices being used
by the subject of the surveillance).
Prohibits information relating to
a U.S. person from being acquired pursuant to FISA without a valid warrant
based on probable cause.
Prohibits the federal government
from requiring manufacturers of electronic devices and related software to
build in mechanisms allowing the federal government to bypass encryption or
privacy technology.
Directs the Comptroller General
(GAO) to report
annually on the federal government's compliance with FISA.
Permits an employee of or
contractor to an element of the intelligence community with knowledge of
FISA-authorized programs and activities to submit a covered complaint to the
Comptroller General, to the House or Senate intelligence committees, or in
accordance with a process under the National Security Act of 1947 with respect
to reports made to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. Defines
a "covered complaint" as a complaint or information concerning
FISA-authorized programs and activities that an employee or contractor
reasonably believes is evidence of: (1) a violation of any law, rule, or
regulation; or (2) gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of
authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.
Subjects an officer or employee of an element of the intelligence community to
administrative sanctions, including termination, for taking retaliatory action
against an employee or contractor who seeks to disclose, or who discloses, such
information.
Mass surveillance deters activism
Lerner, 14 (Mark,
spokesperson for Constitutional Alliance, a non-profit alliance of individual
citizens, state and national groups, and state lawmakers that opposes state
surveillance. The Chilling Effect of Domestic Spying 8-5-14.
http://americanpolicy.org/2014/08/05/the-chilling-effect-of-domestic-spying/)
The good news is now that the Snowden revelations have revealed to a large degree
the domestic surveillance taking place, the public
knows more about what OUR government is doing. The bad news is the chilling effect creating a
surveillance state has on a representative form of government.
The chilling effect can be simply
defined as the way in which people alter or modify their behavior to conform to
political and social norms as a result of knowing or believing they are being
observed. The observation can be from physical surveillance,
telephone meta data being collected, emails being intercepted and read, search
engine requests being maintained, text messages being read and stored,
financial transactions being monitored and much more. This paper will examine
the chilling effect and provide some empirical data (links within this article)
to show the chilling effect is real.
Denial is no longer an option. For years, even decades
it has been reported by people inside and outside our government that agencies
and departments within our federal government have been spying on citizens and
further collecting data (Personal Identifiable Information) associated with the
domestic spying taking place. Many of us who discussed the spying taking place
were called conspiracy theorists, tin foil hat wearers, or black helicopter
paranoid people: Today we are called realists.
The Snowden revelations are
unique because of the depth and scope of the revelations and because Snowden
had the official documents to back up his assertions. Previously people including
former NSA analysts such as William Binney, Thomas Drake, Russell Tice and Kirk
Wiebe had come forward asserting that our government was spying on citizens.
Too
many in the government, the media, and the public dismissed the allegations of
these men because it was easy to do so rather than believe the worst about
our government, or actually having to do something about domestic spying. To be
fair the NSA has not been the only ones accused of domestic spying. The FBI,
DHS, and the CIA have also been proven to having done their own domestic
spying; in the case of the FBI going back over seventy years.
I
support the need for our intelligence community, law enforcement, and our
military. Unfortunately in much the same way the Stockholm Syndrome results
in a person who has been kidnapped falling victim to the goals and aspirations
of the kidnappers, the rank and file of those responsible for protecting us
and our freedom have fallen victim to corrupt leadership in our intelligence
and law enforcement communities. The culture of corruption is just as
infectious as any chemical or biological weapon of mass destruction.
Congress
has its share of the blame for the domestic spying that has and even to this
day is taking place. After all it is congress that has the responsibility of
oversight over agencies and departments of the federal government. All too
often congress has failed to do what it has been tasked with doing; performing
oversight. In fact, not too long ago congress gave retroactive immunity to
telecom companies for the roles telecom companies played in illegally
collecting information for the NSA at the request of former President Bush.
When it comes down to it, there is plenty of blame to go around. Some are
guilty: All are responsible including the public for not demanding better of
our elected and appointed officials.
Whether
a Democrat or Republican occupied the White House or regardless of which party
controlled the Senate and/or the House of Representatives, domestic spying took
place and is still taking place. Domestic spying is not a Right or Left
issue. Domestic spying is an equal opportunity offender.
Typically
I would provide dozens of links in an article to substantiate what I am
writing. In the case of the chilling effect I am only going to provide three
links. The three links provide undeniable evidence that the chilling effect is
real and how the chilling effect is affecting our country
http://gigaom.com/2013/08/20/through-a-
prism-darkly-fear-of-nsa-surveillance-is-
having-a-chilling-effect-on-the-open-web/ and https://www.commondreams.org/
headline/2013/11/12-5 and finally http:// papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
abstract_id=2412564
The
bottom line is the chilling effect is not some psycho mumble jumble. The chilling effect is quantifiable based on empirical
data. People were polled and research has been done. The public including
lawmakers, young people, journalists and other writers have all too various
degrees become subject to the chilling effect. Political scientists, attorneys,
law professors, psychologists, sociologists have all weighed in on the chilling
effect. I have read dozens of papers and other material accounting for
thousands of pages about the Chilling Effect.
Depending on who is doing the
research and the writing, it is fair and reasonable to assert that as much as
50% of people or more alter their behavior to conform to political and social
norms as a direct result of the surveillance state that has been created in the
United States. Up to 33% of journalists and other writers have admitted to
changing what they write or say, or seriously considered changing what they
write or say because they believe they are being watched.
What does all this mean to
activists who are attempting to get the general public engaged in a whole
host of issues from Common Core, Real ID, smart meters, immigration, national
debt, healthcare, foreign policy and yes, even including domestic surveillance
among other issues? What it means is the chilling effect will make it much more difficult to
engage the general public much less educate and motivate the general public to
take a stand and have their voices heard.
In addition to the surveillance state we must not forget that state and federal government has
said domestic terrorism is the biggest threat to our country. Veterans,
anti-abortion advocates, anti-war activists, third party supporters,
environmentalists, 2nd Amendment supporters, states rights proponents, and
many other groups of people have all been named as potential domestic
terrorists by state and federal government agencies and departments. Once
again it is not a Left/Right issue. People and groups on both sides of the
political spectrum are suspects. The presumption of innocence is no longer a
consideration. This broad profiling of people and groups only exasperates the
Chilling Effect domestic spying has.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, 13 (Non-profit advocacy organization defending online civil liberties. EFF
Files 22 Firsthand Accounts of How NSA Surveillance Chilled the Right to
Association 11-6-13.
https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-files-22-firsthand-accounts-how-nsa-surveillance-chilled-right-association)
The Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) has provided a federal judge with testimony from 22 separate
advocacy organizations detailing how the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass
telephone records collection program has impeded the groups' work, discouraged
their members and reduced the numbers of people seeking their help via hotlines.
The declarations accompanied a motion for partial summary
judgment filed late Wednesday, in which EFF asks the court to declare the
surveillance illegal on two levels—the law does not authorize the
program, and the Constitution forbids it.
In First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA, EFF represents a diverse
array of environmentalists, gun-rights
activists, religious groups, human-rights workers, drug-policy advocates and
others that share one major commonality: they each depend on the First Amendment's
guarantee of free association. EFF argues that if the government vacuums up the records of every phone
call—who made the call, who received the call, when
and how long the parties spoke—then
people will be afraid to join or engage with organizations that may have
dissenting views on political issues of the day. The US
government acknowledged the existence of the telephone records collection
program this summer, after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked a copy of a
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order authorizing the mass collection
of Verizon telephone records.
"The plaintiffs, like
countless other associations across the country, have suffered real and
concrete harm because they have lost the ability to assure their constituents
that the fact of their telephone communications between them will be kept
confidential from the federal government," EFF Senior
Staff Attorney David Greene said. "This
has caused constituents to reduce their calling. This is exactly the type of
chilling effect on the freedom of association that the First Amendment
forbids."
Pasternack, 14 (Alex,
Editor-At-Large of VICE. In Our Google Searches, Researchers See a
Post-Snowden Chilling Effect, 5-5-14. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-chilling-effect)
According to a new study of
Google search trends, searches for terms deemed to be sensitive to government
or privacy concerns have dropped "significantly" in the months since
Edward Snowden's revelations in July.
"It seemed very possible that we would see no
effect," MIT economist Catherine
Tucker and digital privacy advocate Alex Marthews write. "However, we do in fact see an overall roughly 2.2 percentage point
fall in search traffic on 'high government trouble'-rated search terms."
Tucker and Marthews asked nearly 6,000 people to rate
the sensitivity of a pile of keywords—including those on the DHS social
media watchword list—based on whether the word would "get them into
trouble" or "embarrass" them with their family, their close
friends, or with the US government.
Marthews, the head of the the Cambridge-based digital
advocacy group Digital Fourth, had predicted an effect on search behavior.
Tucker, a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management who specializes in data
issues, had not expected to see an effect.
But by analyzing Google's publicly-available search
data, they noticed a general pattern: even as searches for less sensitive words
appeared to rise, searches for the most suspicious words fell.
"This is the first academic
empirical evidence of a chilling effect on users willingness to enter search
terms that raters thought would get you into trouble with the US government," Tucker wrote in an email.
Researchers found a rise in
search terms with "low" government sensitivity and a decline in terms
with "high" sensitivity.
Paglen, 13 (Trevor, Ph.D. in Geography from U.C. Berkeley,
artist and author. Has written several books on state secrecy, including the
CIA's extraordinary rendition program. Turnkey Tyranny: Surveillance and the
Terror State 6-23-13.
http://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/25/surveillance-and-the-construction-of-a-terror-state/?gllry=opn)
By exposing NSA programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant, Edward Snowden has revealed that we are not moving toward
a surveillance state: we live in the heart of one. The
30-year-old whistleblower told The Guardians Glenn Greenwald that
the NSAs data collection created the possibility of
a turnkey tyranny, whereby a malevolent future government could create an
authoritarian state with the flick of a switch. The truth is actually worse. Within the context of current economic, political and
environmental trends, the existence of a surveillance state doesnt just create
a theoretical possibility of tyranny with the turn of a key—it virtually
guarantees it.
For more than a decade, weve seen the rise of what we
might call a Terror State, of which the NSAs surveillance capabilities
represent just one part. Its rise occurs at a historical moment when state
agencies and programs designed to enable social mobility, provide economic
security and enhance civic life have been targeted for significant cuts. The
last three decades, in fact, have seen serious and consistent attacks on social
security, food assistance programs, unemployment benefits and education and
health programs. As the social safety net has shrunk, the prison system has
grown. The United States now imprisons
its own citizens at a higher rate than any other country in the world.
While civic parts of the state have been in retreat,
institutions of the Terror State have grown dramatically. In the name of an
amorphous and never-ending war on terror, the Department of Homeland Security
was created, while institutions such as the CIA, FBI and NSA, and darker parts
of the military like the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) have expanded
considerably in size and political influence. The world has become a battlefield—a stage for
extralegal renditions, indefinite detentions without trial, drone assassination
programs and cyberwarfare. We have entered an era of secret
laws, classified interpretations of laws and the retroactive legalization of
classified programs that were clearly illegal when they began. Funding for the
secret parts of the state comes from a black budget hidden from
Congress—not to mention the people—that now tops $100 billion
annually. Finally, to ensure that only government-approved leaks appear in
the media, the Terror State has waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, leakers
and journalists. All of these state programs and capacities would have been
considered aberrant only a short time ago. Now, they are the norm.
Politicians claim that the Terror State is necessary
to defend democratic institutions from the threat of terrorism. But there is a
deep irony to this rhetoric. Terrorism does not pose, has never posed and never
will pose an existential threat to the United States. Terrorists
will never have the capacity to take away our freedom. Terrorist outfits have
no armies with which to invade, and no means to impose martial law. They do not
have their hands on supra-national power levers like the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. They cannot force nations
into brutal austerity programs and other forms of economic subjugation.
But while terrorism cannot pose an existential
threat to the United States, the institutions of a Terror State absolutely can.
Indeed, their
continued expansion poses a serious threat to principles of democracy and
equality.
At its most spectacular, terrorism works by instilling so much fear in a society
that the society begins to collapse on itself. The effects of persistent mass
surveillance provide one example of such disintegration. Most obviously, surveillance
represents a searing breach of personal privacy, as became clear when NSA
analysts passed around phone-sex recordings of overseas troops and their
stateside spouses. And while surveillance inhibits the exercise of civil liberties for all, it inevitably targets racial, religious and political
minorities. Witness the Department of Homeland Securitys surveillance of
Occupy activists, the NYPDs monitoring of Muslim Americans, the FBIs ruthless
entrapment of young Muslim men and the use of anti-terror statutes against
environmental activists. Moreover, mass surveillance also has a deep effect on culture,
encouraging conformity to a narrow range of acceptable ideas by frightening people away from non-mainstream thought. If the
government keeps a record of every library book you read, you might be
disinclined to check out The Anarchist Cookbook today; tomorrow you might think
twice before borrowing Lenins Imperialism. Looking past whatever threats may
or may not exist from overseas terrorists, the next few decades will be decades of crisis. Left
unchecked, systemic instability caused by growing economic inequality and
impending environmental disaster will produce widespread insecurity. On the economic side, we are facing an increasingly acute
crisis of capitalism and a growing disparity between the haves and
have-nots, both nationally and globally. For several decades, the vast
majority of economic gains have gone to the wealthiest segments of society,
while the middle and working classes have seen incomes stagnate and decline.
Paul Krugman has dubbed this phenomenon the Great Divergence. A few
statistics are telling: between 1992 and 2007, the income of the 400 wealthiest
people in the United States rose by 392 percent. Their tax rate fell by 37
percent. Since 1979, productivity has risen by more than 80 percent, but the
median workers wage has only gone up by 10 percent. This is not an accident.
The evisceration of the American middle and working class has everything to do
with an all-out assault on unions; the rewriting of the laws governing
bankruptcy, student loans, credit card debt, predatory lending and financial
trading; and the transfer of public wealth to private hands through
deregulation, privatization and reduced taxes on the wealthy. The Great
Divergence is, to put it bluntly, the effect of a class war waged by the rich
against the rest of society, and there are no signs of it letting up. All the while, we are on a collision course with nature.
Mega-storms, tornadoes, wildfires, floods and erratic weather patterns are
gradually becoming the rule rather than the exception. There are no
signs of any serious efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions at levels anywhere
near those required to avert the worst climate-change scenarios. According to the most robust climate models, global carbon
emissions between now and mid-century must be kept below 565 gigatons to meet the Copenhagen Accords target of limiting global warming to a
two-degree Celsius increase. Meanwhile,
as Bill McKibben has noted, the worlds energy companies currently hold in
reserve 2,795 gigatons of carbon, which they plan to release in the coming
decades. Clearly, they have bet that world governments will fail to
significantly regulate greenhouse emissions. The plan is
to keep burning fossil fuels, no matter the environmental consequences. While
right-wing politicians write off climate change as a global conspiracy among
scientists, the Pentagon has identified it as a significant threat to national
security. After a decade of studies and war games involving climate-change
scenarios, the Department of Defenses 2010 Quadrennial Review (the main public
document outlining American military doctrine) explains that climate-related
changes are already being observed in every region of the world, and that they
could have significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to
poverty, environmental degradation, and the further weakening of fragile
governments. Climate change will
contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and
may spur or exacerbate mass migration. Nationally
and internationally, the effects of climate change will be felt unevenly.
Whether its rising water levels or skyrocketing prices for foods due to
irregular weather, the effects of a tumultuous climate will disproportionately
impact societys most precarious populations. Thus, the effects of climate change will exacerbate already
existing trends toward greater economic inequality, leading to widespread
humanitarian crises and social unrest. The coming decades will bring
Occupy-like protests on ever-larger scales as high unemployment and economic
strife, particularly among youth, becomes a new normal. Moreover, the effects of climate change will produce new populations of
displaced people and refugees. Economic and environmental insecurity represent
the future for vast swaths of the worlds population. One way or another, governments will be forced to respond. As future
governments face these intensifying crises, the decline of the states civic
capacities virtually guarantees that they will meet any unrest with the
authoritarian levers of the Terror State. It wont matter whether a liberal
or conservative government is in place; faced with an immediate crisis, the
state will use whatever means are available to end said crisis. When the most
robust levers available are tools of mass surveillance and coercion, then those
tools will be used. Whats more, laws like the National
Defense Authorization Act, which provides for the indefinite detention of American
citizens, indicate that military and intelligence programs originally crafted
for combating overseas terrorists will be applied domestically.
The larger, longer-term scandal
of Snowdens revelations is that, together with other political trends, the
NSAs programs do not merely provide the capacity for turnkey
tyranny—they render any other future all but impossible.
MacKinnon, 12 (Rebecca,
Bernard Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. She is the author
of Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom
(2012). She is also the co-founder of Global Voices Online, a global citizen
media network. Internet Activism? Lets Look at the Specifics 5-11-12.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2012/05/11/rebecca-mackinnon/internet-activism-lets-look-specifics)
Berin Szoka is right to argue that while the Internet brings new dimensions and power to
activism, we must not be nave about the power of networked technologies. It is
important to unpack the factors behind successful—and
unsuccessful—online activism. Examples of
both abound. Internet connectivity and
widespread social media adoption do not on their own guarantee activisms
success. The Internet is not some sort of automatic freedom juice.
Success or failure of digital activism depends on a
plethora of variables—economic, cultural, religious, commercial,
political, personal, and accidents of history. In his seminal book The Digital
Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political
Islam, Philip N. Howard, a professor at the University of Washington and expert on technology and
political change in the Islamic world, concludes that while the Internet and mobile technologies
do not cause change, change is unlikely to happen without sufficient mobile and
Internet penetration.[1] Indeed, the two Arab
countries in which dictators were deposed without civil war in 2011 were
Tunisia and Egypt—both of which have relatively high rates of Internet
penetration and social media use compared to many other parts of the Middle
East and North Africa. However, as I discuss at some
length in my book Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet
Freedom, the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt did not spring immaculately from
Twitter and Facebook. Movements for political change in these countries
developed and matured over the course of a decade; then when the right moment
came activists were in a position to take advantage of them. Activists
experimented with networked technologies, honed their messages over time, built
support networks, and generally worked to use Internet and mobile platforms to
their maximum advantage. They also spent a decade building offline
relationships both nationally and regionally and honing offline protest skills.
The revolutions successes in Tunisia and Egypt, as Szoka rightly points out,
had much to do with widespread economic grievances and anger over state
corruption.
Another factor was the relative lack of sectarian
divisions in Egypt and Tunisia as compared to other countries in the region.
This contrasts sharply with Bahrain which also boasts deep Internet penetration
and widespread social media usage, but whose society is torn asunder by a deep
sectarian divide between majority Shiites and Sunni political elites. This
divide has enabled the ruling Al Khalifa family to suppress dissent violently
and with impunity—aided by other geopolitical factors including support
from neighboring Saudi Arabia, which considers Sunni activism on its doorstep
to be a dangerous sign of Iranian political meddling. Then there is the
presence in Bahrain of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, a geopolitical rather than a
technological reality that makes rapid political change in Bahrain all the less
likely. In Syria, Internet penetration was much more shallow and online
communities much weaker to begin with. This combined with a sharp sectarian
divide has meant that while activists have been able to use the Internet to get
information out to the world about the Assad regimes atrocities against its
own people, conventional geopolitics—not new media—will be the
decisive factor in deciding when and how Assad will fall from power.
Success or failure of digital
activism in authoritarian states also
depends on the regimes technological capacity,
skill, foresight, and planning. As I describe in detail in
the third chapter of my book, the Chinese government took the Internet
seriously as both a political threat and economic opportunity from the moment
it began to allow commercial Internet services in the mid-1990s. The Chinese
government built the worlds most sophisticated system of filtering and
blocking for overseas websites, including most famously most Google-owned
services, Facebook, and Twitter. At the same time, the government encouraged
the development of a robust domestic Internet and telecommunications industry
so that Chinese technology users can enjoy an abundant variety of domestically
run social media platforms, online information services, Internet and mobile
platforms, and devices produced by Chinese companies. By imposing strong political
and legal liability on Internet intermediaries, the government forced
companies—many financed by Western capital—not only to foot the
bill for much of the regimes censorship and surveillance needs, but to do much
of the actual work.
Online activism still does occur
in China, but due to multiple layers of censorship and surveillance, activisms
successes have for the most part been local, presenting minimal threat to the
power of the central government and Communist Party. Users of the
Chinese Twitter-like social networking platform Weibo have ruined the careers
of local and provincial officials by exposing their corruption. Chinese
netizens, as they like to call themselves, have also called attention to
specific errors or incompetencies of specific parts of the bureaucracy, which
the central government has then moved to fix—which in many ways boosts
the central governments power and credibility as compared to local governments
or specific ministers seeking to develop independent power bases. To date, activists who have tried to use social media to
build national movements for systemic political change have consistently gone
to jail or been placed under house arrest, their supporters and friends often
harassed and threatened with loss of jobs and educational opportunities even if
they have not technically committed any crime by Chinese law. The case of
the blind activist Chen Guangcheng may or may not serve as a watershed moment
for Chinese activism—it remains too early to tell. But if it does, the
reasons for digital activisms success in China will have as much to do with
offline domestic and international factors as with anything technological: a
leadership crisis at the top of the Communist Party precipitated by the
downfall of the power-hungry Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai; plus specific
developments not only in the U.S.–China diplomatic relationship but also
U.S. domestic partisan politics, which Chens supporters have taken skillful
advantage of, using social media of course.
To complicate matters further, the Internet itself—its technical architecture as
well as the regulatory constraints shaping what people in different places can
and cannot do with it—is a variable. We cannot treat the Internet as
constant—either across geographical space or across time—in our
calculations about the success of online activism. In Thailand, for example, the relative weakness of online
activism is the result in no small part of heavy liability placed by national
laws on Internet intermediaries. Thailands
Computer Crimes Act holds Internet service providers and website operators
legally responsible for the activities of their users. This, combined with an
antiquated lse majest law banning insulting comments about the king, has
resulted in the arrest of people involved with running activist and opposition
websites and made it difficult for online activism to achieve critical mass.[2] In Azerbaijan, a blanket surveillance system imposed by
the government on Internet and mobile network operators is combined in a politically
insidious manner with media manipulation, arrests, and intimidation of online
activists. This has, in the words of Internet scholars Katy
Pearce and Sarah Kendzior, who recently concluded a multi-year study of the
Azerbaijani Internet, successfully dissuaded frequent Internet users from
supporting protest and average Internet users from using social media for
political purposes.[3]
Thus while the Internet often
empowers activism, it is also used in many parts of the world as an insidious
extension of state power—sometimes with the direct
collaboration of companies seeking market access; sometimes much more
indirectly due to the fact that Internet and mobile companies are conduits and
repositories of vast amounts of citizens personal data, and also make
commercial decisions that have a profound impact on peoples digital lives and
identities.
Back home in the United States, this is precisely why
recent political movements against legislation like SOPA and CISPA that Szoka
describes are so important. SOPA would not only have built a great firewall of
America but would have imposed liability on Internet intermediaries in a
manner that was ripe for political as well as commercial abuse. CISPA, in the
name of securing Americas networks, will also legalize and institutionalize
mechanisms of government access to citizens private communications that lack
accountability, inviting abuse against which citizens will have no meaningful
recourse as the legislation is currently written.
Whether the Internet remains
conducive to political activism, or with liberal democracy for that matter, is
by no means guaranteed. We face a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on
whether you are an optimist or a pessimist: Activism is urgently
required—nationally and globally—to ensure that the Internet
remains compatible with activism.
Fontaine, 14 (Richard,
President of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He served as a
Senior Advisor and Senior Fellow at CNAS from 2009-2012 and previously as
foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain for more than five years. He has also worked at the State
Department, the National Security Council and on the staff of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee. Reenergizing the Internet Freedom Agenda in a
Post-Snowden Era, September 2014.
http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS_BringingLibertyOnline_Fontaine.pdf)
A Snapshot of Internet Freedom Today The scrambled Internet freedom narrative and its
complicated consequences are discouraging, not least because the need for an
active online freedom agenda has never been more pressing. It is today
estimated that roughly half of Internet users worldwide experience online
censorship in some form.41 Freedom House observes a
deterioration in global Internet freedom over the three consecutive years it
has issued reports; its 2013 volume notes that Internet freedom declined in
more than half of the 60 countries it assessed. Broad surveillance, new legislation controlling online
content and the arrest of Internet users are all on the increase; over the
course of a single year, some 24 countries passed new laws or regulations that
threaten online freedom of speech.42 A glance
at the past 12 months reveals a disturbing trend. In Turkey, for example, after its high
court overturned a ban on Twitter, the government began demanding that the
company quickly implement orders to block specific users. Ankara also
blocked YouTube after a
surreptitious recording of the countrys foreign minister surfaced, and it has
dramatically increased its takedown requests to both Twitter and Google.43 Russia has begun directly censoring the Internet with a
growing blacklist of websites, and under a new law its government can block
websites that encourage people to participate in unauthorized protests.44
Chinese social media censorship has become so pervasive that it constitutes, according to one study, the largest selective suppression of human communication
in the history of the world.45 China has also begun
assisting foreign countries, including Iran and Zambia, in their efforts to
monitor and censor the Internet.46 Vietnam
has enacted a new law making it illegal to distribute digital content that
opposes the government.47 Venezuela has blocked access to
certain websites and limited Internet access in parts of the country.48
A robust, energetic American Internet freedom agenda
is most needed at the very moment that that agenda has come under the greatest
attack. Reenergizing the Agenda Precisely because the Internet is today such a contested
space, it is vitally important that the United States be actively involved in
promoting online freedom. Americas Internet freedom efforts accord with the
countrys longstanding tradition of promoting human rights, including freedoms
of expression, association and assembly. And it represents a bet: that access
to an open Internet can foster elements of democracy in autocratic states by
empowering those who are pressing for liberal change at home. While the outcome
of that bet remains uncertain, there should be no doubt about which side the
United States has chosen.
HAMBURG 95 DeWitt Wallace Distinguished Scholar at
Weill Cornell Medical College. He is President Emeritus at Carnegie
Corporation.
[David A. Hamburg, Foreword to A Report to the
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, December 1995, http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm]
From an
early stage in democracy building, a wide understanding of the possibilities
for nonviolent conflict resolution and the practical value of mutual
accommodation among different sectors and peoples within a state is important.
At every step, from articulation of fundamental principles to implementation of
operational details, there is a need to educate for democracy. Indeed, modern
telecommunications may make it feasible to have a worldwide democratic network
under highly respected auspices--perhaps a mix of governmental and
nongovernmental supporters. Through such a network, in a short time it might be
possible to enhance the level of understanding throughout the world of what is
involved in democracy and its potential benefits for all, especially its
capacity for nonviolent conflict resolution. People need to see that
cooperation can often lead to greater benefits in the long run and to recognize
superordinate goals of compelling value to all concerned that can be achieved
only by cooperation.
Regrettably,
the high ideals that characterize democracy are not readily translated into
practice. Indeed, democracy is an evolving,
changing, adapting, updating process--always less than ideal, yet always
shaped by high aspirations, with norms of decency
becoming stronger as the years go by. Nevertheless, new democracies can
learn a great deal from the experience of old democracies and need not require
centuries to make a reasonable first approximation of democratic ideals in
practice. Even a very crude approximation would be a
considerable improvement over the experience of many countries to date.
The
building of democratic institutions would be one of the greatest conflict
prevention measures that could be taken, especially
if one thinks in terms of both political and economic democratic structures.
The international community of established
democracies must address the translation of this aspiration into the reality of
emerging democracies. So fortunate a
community, with so much relevant experience in coping with the problems
of modern societies, is morally obligated to smooth
the path to democratization around the world in a systematic, deliberate,
long-term, high-priority way.
The Carnegie Commission on
Preventing Deadly Conflict is concerned with building preventive capacities, so
that people can live together peacefully over the long term. The building of
democratic institutions is certainly one crucial, albeit complicated and
frustratingly slow, component of this challenge. Historically, there is little
precedent for well-organized international efforts to help substantially with
this process of democratization--yet there is enough experience to know that it
is not impossible.
If democracy is viewed as an
optional preoccupation of self-righteous democratizers--or even as an intrusive
activity of sugar-coated neo-imperialists--then all this is much ado about
nothing (or worse). But if we view democracy as a
powerful and constructive mechanism for resolving the ubiquitous ongoing
conflicts of our highly contentious human species, then the challenge becomes
vital, and the opportunity precious. That is why this essay is so
important.
LEESON &
DEAN 09 1 George Mason University 2 West Virginia University
[Peter
T. Leeson, Andrea M. Dean, The Democratic Domino Theory: An Empirical
Investigation, American Journal of
Political Science, Volume 53, Issue 3, pages 533–551, July 2009]
Potential
Mechanisms of Democratic Dominoes Simmons, Dobbin,
and Garrett (2006) identify four potential
mechanisms, or channels, through which democracy may spread between countries.
Although these authors are not specifically concerned with a geography-based
domino idea as we are, the mechanisms they identify are all plausible
candidates for geographic democratic contagion. The
first such channel is simple Tiebout competition. Although the
transactions costs of migration are nontrivial between nations and can be very
high in countries that strictly limit mobility, competition between governments
can create strong incentives for geographic neighbors to increase democratic
constraints, leading prodemocracy changes to spread throughout geographic
regions. If a country strengthens its democracy,
for instance by institutionalizing greater constraints on executive authority, it is likely to attract additional foreign business and
direct investment as agents seek the most secure locations to undertake
economic activity.3 The firms and citizens that find this move the least
costly are those in neighboring nations that share a border with the
democratizing country. Their movement or potential movement can pressure
neighboring countries to undertake similar democracy-oriented reforms to avoid
losing their tax base. If these nations neighbors in turn democratize to avoid
losing their tax base to their democratizing neighbors, and so on, the
resulting competition can lead to a contagion effect that creates greater
democracy throughout a region of neighboring countries. A second potential mechanism of democracy's spread
between geographic neighbors is through the
diffusion of prodemocracy ideas via a demonstration effect, or what Simmons,
Dobbin, and Garrett call learning. Neighboring
countries can observe the activities
of the countries around them and import successful
ideas at a lower cost than if they had to look further abroad to find them.
If one country employs democracy-enhancing ideas, its geographic neighbors may
become more likely to adopt them as well. Once these countries have adopted
democracy-enhancing ideas, their neighbors become more likely to adopt them,
and so on. This process may cause a cascade of more democracy whereby increases
in democracy in one country spread to countries around it. This democracy
demonstration effect could also operate in conjunction with a migration-style
mechanism along the lines discussed above. Democracy advocates in one country,
for example, may penetrate the borders of neighboring countries that are less
democratic, carrying their ideas with them as well as providing the impetus for
domestic prodemocratic reform. A third potential
channel of democracy's geographic spread is
through economic communities or zones. As Pevehouse (2002a, 2002b)
points out, economic communities such as NAFTA and the EU often harmonize not
only their members economic policies, but also their members political
arrangements, in some cases requiring members to satisfy certain institutional
requirements as a condition of membership. In many cases admission to these
communities confers benefits on members in the form of cross-country
subsidization, protection alliances, and so forth. These benefits raise the value
of joining economic zones, creating an incentive for nonmember nations to
increase their level of democracy if, for example, membership requires
institutional constraints that directly or indirectly serve to limit the
executive's authority. Since economic communities
are often geographically based, their presence may in this way produce
spreading democracy throughout a region of neighboring countries. The final potential mechanism of democratic
contagion that Simmons, Dobbin, and Garrett highlight is what they call emulation. According to this
idea, some big player countries, such as
the United States, lead in terms of political
institutions (and policies), which other
countries then follow. If the United States strengthens its democracy in
some fashion, other countries may do so as well. Like the other channels
considered above, this channel need not be a geographic mechanism of spreading
democracy. If, for instance, Argentina follows prodemocracy reform in the
United States, democracy may spread but not between geographic neighbors.
However, within various geographic regions there may be local big
players—regional leader countries—that neighboring nations tend to
look to in guiding their behavior. In this way emulation may also be a
geographic channel for democratic dominoes between neighboring countries. These are only a few of the imaginable mechanisms through
which democratic dominoes might be set in motion. Surely others could be
proposed. Further, while in principle some of these channels, such as
emulation, may be capable of spreading either increases or decreases in
democracy geographically, others, such as Tiebout competition, may only be
capable of spreading increases in democracy geographically. Although these channels are conceptually distinct,
separating them empirically is a different matter. Our interest is in
identifying if there is in fact any significant empirical evidence for
democratic dominoes regardless of their source and, if there is, establishing
how hard they fall. It is not our goal, nor does our empirical strategy allow
us, to identify which, if any, of the specific potential channels of
democracy's geographic spread have or have not been at work at various points
in history. Although it does not do so in a spatial econometric framework and
is not focused only on democracy, some existing research has found evidence for
various kinds of policy diffusion via each of the channels pointed to above
(see, for instance, Elkins, Guzman, and Simmons 2006; Gleditsch and Ward 2006;
Lee and Strang 2006; Swank 2006). Future work should attempt to pinpoint the
operation of these and other specific mechanisms explicitly in the context of
the spatial framework this article employs.
DIAMOND 95 Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution,
Stanford, and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy. Professor of political science and
sociology, coordinates the democracy program of the Center on Democracy,
Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL)
[Larry Diamond, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s:
Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives, A Report to the Carnegie
Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict Carnegie Corporation of New York,
December 1995, http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm]
POTENTIAL THREATS TO GLOBAL ORDER AND NATIONAL SECURITY On any list of the most important potential threats to
world order and national security in the
coming decade, these six should figure prominently: a hostile, expansionist
Russia; a hostile, expansionist China; the spread of fundamentalist
Islamic, anti-Western regimes; the spread of
political terrorism from all sources; sharply
increased immigration pressures; and ethnic conflict that escalates into
large-scale violence, civil war, refugee flows, state collapse, and
general anarchy. Some of these potential
threats interact in significant ways with one another, but they all share a common underlying connection. In each
instance, the development of democracy is an important prophylactic, and in some cases the only long- term protection, against
disaster. A HOSTILE, EXPANSIONIST RUSSIA Chief among the threats to the security of Europe,
the United States, and Japan would be the reversion
of Russia--with its still very substantial
nuclear, scientific, and military prowess--to
a hostile posture toward the West. Today, the
Russian state (insofar as it continues to exist) appears perched on the precipice of capture by
ultranationalist, anti-Semitic, neo-imperialist
forces seeking a new era of pogroms, conquest, and
"greatness." These forces feed on the weakness of democratic
institutions, the divisions among democratic forces, and the generally dismal
economic and political state of the country under civilian, constitutional
rule. Numerous observers speak of "Weimar Russia." As in Germany in
the 1920s, the only alternative to a triumph
of fascism (or some related "ism" deeply hostile to freedom and to
the West) is the development of an effective
democratic order. Now, as then, this project must struggle against great
historical and political odds, and it seems feasible only with international economic
aid and support for democratic forces and institutions. A HOSTILE,
EXPANSIONIST CHINA In China, the threat to the West emanates from success
rather than failure and is less amenable to explicit international assistance
and inducement. Still, a China moving toward
democracy--gradually constructing a real constitutional order, with
established ground rules for political competition and succession and civilian
control over the military--seems a much better
prospect to be a responsible player on the regional and international stage.
Unfair trade practices, naval power projection, territorial expansion,
subversion of neighboring regimes, and bullying of democratic forces in Hong
Kong and Taiwan are all more likely the more China resists political liberalization.
So is a political succession crisis that could disrupt incremental patterns of
reform and induce competing power players to take risks internationally to
advance their power positions at home. A China that
is building an effective rule of law seems a much better prospect to respect
international trading rules that mandate protection for intellectual
property and forbid the use of prison labor. And on these matters of legal,
electoral, and institutional development, international actors can help. THE
SPREAD OF ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM Increasingly, Europeans and Americans
worry about the threat from fundamentalist Islam. But fundamentalist movements do not mobilize righteous anger
and absolute commitment in a vacuum. They feed on the utter failure of decadent
political systems to meet the most elementary expectations for material
progress and social justice. Some say the West must choose between corrupt,
repressive regimes that are at least secular and pro-Western and Islamic
fundamentalist regimes that will be no less repressive, but anti-Western. That is a false choice in Egypt today, as it was in
Iran or Algeria--at least until their societies became so polarized as to
virtually obliterate the liberal center. It is
precisely the corruption, arrogance, oppression, and gross inefficacy of ruling regimes like the current one in Egypt that
stimulate the Islamic fundamentalist alternative. Though force may be
needed--and legitimate--to meet an armed challenge, history teaches that
decadent regimes cannot hang on forever through force alone. In the long run, the only reliable bulwark against
revolution or anarchy is good governance--and that requires far-reaching
political reform. In Egypt and some other Arab countries, such reform would
entail a gradual program of political liberalization that counters corruption,
reduces state interference in the economy, responds to social needs, and gives
space for moderate forces in civil society to build public support and
understanding for further liberalizing reforms. In Pakistan and Turkey, it would mean making democracy work: stamping out
corruption, reforming the economy, mobilizing state resources efficiently to
address social needs, devolving power, guaranteeing the rights of ethnic and
religious minorities, and--not least-- reasserting civilian control over the
military. In either case, the fundamentalist
challenge can be met only by moving (at varying speeds) toward, not away from, democracy.
POLITICAL TERRORISM Terrorism and
immigration pressures also commonly have
their origins in political exclusion, social injustice, and bad,
abusive, or tyrannical governance. Overwhelmingly,
the sponsors of international terrorism are among the world's most
authoritarian regimes: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan. And locally within
countries, the agents of terrorism tend to be either
the fanatics of antidemocratic, ideological movements or aggrieved ethnic and
regional minorities who have felt themselves socially marginalized and
politically excluded and insecure: Sri Lanka's Tamils, Turkey's Kurds, India's
Sikhs and Kashmiris. To be sure, democracies must vigorously mobilize their
legitimate instruments of law enforcement to counter this growing threat to
their security. But a more fundamental and enduring
assault on international terrorism requires political change to bring down
zealous, paranoiac dictatorships and to allow
aggrieved groups in all countries to pursue
their interests through open, peaceful, and constitutional means. As for immigration, it is true that people everywhere are
drawn to prosperous, open, dynamic societies like those of the United
States, Canada, and Western Europe. But the sources of large (and rapid)
immigration flows to the West increasingly tend to be countries in the grip of
civil war, political turmoil, economic disarray, and poor governance: Vietnam,
Cuba, Haiti, Central America, Algeria. And in Mexico, authoritarianism,
corruption, and social injustice have held back human development in ways that
have spawned the largest sustained flow of immigrants to any Western country--a
flow that threatens to become a floodtide if the Zedillo government cannot
rebuild Mexico's economy and societal consensus around authentic democatic
reform. In other cases--Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan--immigration to
the West has been modest only because of the greater logistical and political
difficulties. However, in impoverished areas of Africa and Asia more remote
from the West, disarray is felt in the flows of refugees across borders, hardly
a benign development for world order. Of course, population growth also heavily
drives these pressures. But a common factor
underlying all of these crisis-ridden emigration points is the absence of
democracy. And, strikingly, populations grow
faster in authoritarian than democratic regimes.4 ETHNIC CONFLICT Apologists for authoritarian rule--as in Kenya and
Indonesia--are wont to argue that multiparty
electoral competition breeds ethnic rivalry and polarization, while strong central control keeps the lid on conflict. But when
multiple ethnic and national identities are
forcibly suppressed, the lid may violently pop when the regime falls
apart. The fate of Yugoslavia, or of Rwanda, dramatically refutes the canard
that authoritarian rule is a better means for containing ethnic conflict.
Indeed, so does the recent experience of Kenya, where ethnic hatred, land
grabs, and violence have been deliberately fostered by the regime of President
Daniel arap Moi in a desperate bid to divide the people and thereby cling to
power. Overwhelmingly, theory and evidence show that
the path to peaceful management of ethnic pluralism lies not through
suppressing ethnic identities and superimposing the hegemony of one
group over others. Eventually, such a formula is
bound to crumble or be challenged violently. Rather,
sustained interethnic moderation and peace follow from the frank recognition of
plural identities, legal protection for group and individual rights,
devolution of power to various localities and regions, and political
institutions that encourage bargaining and accommodation at the center. Such institutional provisions and protections are not only
significantly more likely under democracy, they are only possible with some
considerable degree of democracy.5 OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our
security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former
Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could
easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful
international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian
regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic
ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons
continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem,
appears increasingly endangered. Most of
these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or
absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability,
popular sovereignty, and openness.
RUMMEL 09
Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii
[Rudy
(R.J.) Rummel, Democracy, Democratic peace, freedom, globalization, This entry
was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 4:02 pm, http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/why-freedom/]
There is still more to say about freedoms value. While we
now know that the worlds ruling thugs generally kill several times more of
their subjects than do wars, it is war on which moralists and pacifists
generally focus their hatred, and devote their resources to ending or
moderating. This singular concentration is understandable, given the horror and
human costs, and the vital political significance of war. Yet, it should be clear by now that war is a symptom of
freedoms denial, and that freedom is the cure. First: Democratically free people do not make war on each other
Why? The diverse groups, cross-national bonds, social links, and shared values of democratic peoples sew them together;
and shared liberal values dispose them toward
peaceful negotiation and compromise with each other. It is as though the people of democratic nations were one
society This truth that democracies do not
make war on each other provides a solution for eliminating war from the world:
globalize democratic freedom Second: The less free the people within any two nations are, the
bloodier and more destructive the wars between them; the greater their freedom,
the less likely such wars become And third: The more freedom the people of a nation have, the less
bloody and destructive their wars. What this
means is that we do not have to wait for all, or almost all nations to become
liberal democracies to reduce the severity of war. As we promote freedom, as the people of more and more
nations gain greater human rights and political liberties, as those people
without any freedom become partly free, we will
decrease the bloodiness of the worlds wars. In
short: Increasing freedom in the world decreases the death toll of its wars.
Surely, whatever reduces and then finally ends the scourge of war in our
history, without causing a greater evil, must be a moral good. And this is
freedom In conclusion, then, we have wondrous human freedom as a moral force
for the good, as President Bush well recognizes.
Freedom produces social justice, creates wealth and prosperity, minimizes violence, saves human lives, and is a solution
to war. In two words, it creates human security. Moreover, and most
important:
People should not be free only because it is good for them.
They should be free because it is their right as human beings.
TERRY 07 Colonel, USMC Retired
[James
P. Terry, Foreword, Democracy and Deterrence: foundations for an Enduring World
Peace by Dr. Walter Gary Sharp Sr.
Air University press, p. ix – x]
The causes of
armed conflict have historically been viewed in primarily sociological terms, with political. religious, economic. and military factors sharing primacy. Few have examined the causes of warfare in the context of
a deterrence model or. specically, the
deterrence factors inherent in the checks and balances of a democratic state
and the absence of such factors in the nondemocratic
state. More significantly. none before Prof. John Norton Moore has argued the value of democratic principles in
deterrence and conflict avoidance.
In this important book. Dr. Gary Sharp analyzes the concepts In Moore's semlnal work The War Puzzle
(2005). whIch describes Moores
incentive theory of war avoidance. Sharp carefully
diss sects Moores deterrence model and examines those incentives that
discourage nondemocratic governments from pursuing viol eent conflicts. Arguing that existing democracies must make an active
effort to foster thie political environment in which new democracies can
develop. Sharp discusses the elements
critical to promoting democratization and thus strengthening system wide
deterrence at the state and international levels.
Sharp also examines the incentives for conflict avoidance
(intern aal checks and balances)
inherent in the demdocratic state and their
relationship to war avoidance. In examining current demnocracies and comparing them statistically to
nondemocratic sates, sharp calculates
an aggregated index value of democracy based upon res ppeceed databases that rank the jurisdictions of the world on pol iiicaal rights. civil liberties, media
independence. religious freedom. economic
freedom, and human development. Demonstrating
through his analysis that demnocracies are inherently more peaceful because of
the internal checks and balances on the aggressive use of force. Sharp similarly demonstrates how nondemocracies require
external checks and balances to preclude aggression.
Sharp's analysis and validation of Moore's incentive theory
or war avoidance is critical to an
understanding of those foreign policy
strategies that the United States and other
democratic nations must embrace as they attempt to reverse a course or history
in which 38.5 million war deaths were recorded in the twentieth century alone.
By demonstrating how democracy, economic
freedom. and the rule of law provide essential
mechanisms to deter leaders from precipitous decisions concerning the use of
force. Sharp has provided an Invaluable service to the statesman and international lawyer alike.
SHARP 07 senior associate deputy general
counselor for intelligence at the US DOD.
Democracy
and Deterrence: foundations for an Enduring World Peace by Dr. Walter Gary
Sharp Sr. Air University press. P.
conclusion
Wars and their attendant human
misery begin in the minds of national leaders whose power is unchecked by
incentives and deterrence mechanisms. Because
such restraints are inherent in democratic forms of government, war is comparatively rare where human
freedom, economic freedom, and the rule of law
thrive. The spread of democracy in the twenty-first century is therefore of utmost importance in advancing human
welfare. Actively encouraging the
expansion of freedom is the responsibility or democratic nations. Democracy is, as Bush stated in his first inaugural
address, a seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations. Our democratic faith is more than the
creed of our county, it is the inborn
hope or our humanity. an ideal we carry but do not own. a trust we bear and pass along... . If our country does not lead the cause of freedom. It will not be led.
Though democracy is indeed taking
root in many nations, the free world cannot
rest. For all the progress made in the democratization of the former Soviet
bloc and in other parts or the world, a recent Freedom House study reports that
democracy and good governance are threatened or unattainable in many places.
Russia can no longer be considered a democracy at all by most standards. and democratic development in smaller countries such as Thailand and
Bangladesh has been derailed.12 These
disturbing developments underscore the significance of the war avoidance strategies outlined in this study: encourage the spread or democracy and the rule
of law while establishing positive
and negative Incentive and deterrence mechanisms to restrain those who govern nondemocratic nations.
LI 05
Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University
[Quan
Li, Does Democracy Promote or Reduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?, The
Journal of Conflict Resolution49. 2 (Apr 2005): 278-297]
CONCLUSION
Two main arguments in the democracy-terrorism literature
expect contradictory effects of democracy on transnational terrorism. Previous
empirical work, however, has relied on using some aggregate indicator of regime
type, failing to separate the positive and negative effects of democracy.
In this article, I investigate the various mechanisms by
which democracy affects transnational terrorism. New theoretical mechanisms are
advanced that either complement or encompass existing arguments. First, democratic participation reduces transnational
terrorism in ways in addition to those conceived in the literature. It increases satisfaction and political efficacy of
citizens, reduces their grievances, thwarts terrorist recruitment, and raises
public tolerance of counterterrorist policies. Second, the institutional constraints over government play
a fundamental role in shaping the positive relationship between democracy and
transnational terrorism. Institutional checks and balances create
political deadlock, increase the frustration of marginal groups, impose on the
democratic government the tough task of protecting the general citizenry
against terrorist attacks, and weaken the government's ability to fight
terrorism. The effect of civil liberties on
terrorism popularized in the literature is more complex than commonly
recognized. Finally, heterogeneous democratic systems have different
implications for transnational terrorist activities.
Effects of different aspects of
democracy on transnational terrorism are assessed in a multivariate analysis
for a sample of about 119 countries from 1975 to 1997. Results show that
democratic participation reduces transnational terrorist incidents in a
country. Government constraints, subsuming the effect of press freedom,
increase the number of terrorist incidents in a country. The proportional
representation system experiences fewer transnational terrorist incidents than
either the majoritarian or the mixed system. Overall,
democracy is demonstrated to encourage and reduce transnational terrorist
incidents, albeit via different causal mechanisms.
The findings suggest several
important policy implications for the war on terrorism. Democracy does not have
a singularly positive effect on terrorism as is often claimed and found.
By improving citizen satisfaction, electoral
participation, and political efficacy, democratic governments can reduce the
number of terrorist incidents within their borders.
Limiting civil liberties does not lead to the expected
decline in terrorist attacks, as is sometimes argued. Restricting the freedom of press, movement, and
association does not decrease the number of transnational terrorist incidents.
Strategic terrorists simply select alternative modes
to engage in violence, as argued by Enders and Sandier (2002).
Adam Bender,
7/23/2013. Has PRISM surveillance undermined Internet freedom
advocates? Computer World, http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/521619/has_prism_surveillance_undermined_internet_freedom_advocates_/.
The US
surveillance program PRISM has severely
threatened the continued freedom of Internet advocates, according to Internet
Society (ISOC) regional bureau director for Asia-Pacific, Rajnesh Singh. Recent reports have revealed the
NSA, under a program called PRISM, is collecting metadata about US phone calls,
which includes information about a call—including time, duration and
location—but not the content of the call itself. Also, the NSA is collecting
data on Internet traffic from major Internet companies including Google and
Microsoft. Whats happened with PRISM and
the fallout weve seen is probably the greatest threat we have seen to the
Internet in recent times, Singh said at an ISOC-AU event last night in Sydney. Singh,
who said he was speaking for himself and not necessarily ISOC as a whole, claimed that the spying program has undermined the
positions of Internet advocates in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada
and Australia, which historically have been bastions of Internet freedom. Whats happened with PRISM is these
four or five countries are suddenly the enemy
within, he said. The argument [for Internet freedom] doesnt hold water any
more and thats really made work difficult for us. At
last years World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) treaty talks, countries including Russia, China and Iran
made proposals to regulate Internet content that could have had very bad
implications for the
Internet going forward, Singh said. Many of
the proposals were defeated through talks leading up to the treaty, he said. But
what happened of course was that the
countries at the forefront were Australia, US, UK [and] Canada. After
news about PRISM broke, a delegate from another country who had supported the
four countries in walking out on the treaty told Singh that they now regretted
the decision. According
to Singh, the delegate said, My government
is sorry that we didnt sign the [WCIT treaty] because now we realise what the
real agenda was for the US and Australia and the UK and Canada. It wasnt to
protect the Internet; it was to protect their own surveillance interests.
Megan Gates,
7/29/2014. NSA's Actions Threaten U.S. Economy and Internet Security,
New Report Suggests, Security Management,
http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/nsas-actions-threaten-us-economy-and-internet-security-new-report-suggests-0013601.
The reports
authors also suggested that the NSA
disclosures have undermined American credibility when it comes to the
Internet Freedom Agenda. In 2010, the United States began promoting a policy of an
open and free Internet, but the recent disclosures about the NSA have led many
to question the legitimacy of these efforts in the past year.
Concrete evidence of U.S.
surveillance hardened the positions of authoritarian governments pushing for
greater national control over the Internet and revived proposals from both
Russia and Brazil for multilateral management of technical standards and domain
names, whether through the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) or
other avenues, according
to the report. Many developing nations are
now declining to work with the United States and are instead embracing
assistance from Russia, China, and the ITU when it comes to Internet
availability and control
for their citizens.
Danielle Kehl et al, July 2014. Policy Analyst at New Americas Open Technology
Institute (OTI); Kevin Bankston is the Policy Director at OTI; Robyn Greene is
a Policy Counsel at OTI; and Robert Morgus is a Research Associate at OTI.
Surveillance Costs: The NSAs Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom &
Cybersecurity,
http://oti.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf.
Mandatory
data localization proposals are just one of a number of ways that foreign governments have reacted to NSA surveillance in a
manner that threatens U.S. foreign policy interests, particularly with regard to Internet Freedom. There
has been a quiet tension between how the U.S. approaches freedom of expression
online in its foreign policy and its domestic laws ever since Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton effectively launched the Internet Freedom agenda in
January 2010. 170 But the
NSA disclosures shined a bright spotlight on the contradiction: the U.S.
government promotes free expression abroad and aims to prevent repressive
governments from monitoring and censoring their citizens while simultaneously
supporting domestic laws that authorize surveillance and bulk data collection. As cybersecurity expert and Internet governance scholar
Ron Deibert wrote a few days after the first revelations: There are unintended
consequences of the NSA scandal that will undermine U.S. foreign policy
interests – in particular, the Internet Freedom agenda espoused by the U.S. State Department
and its allies. 171 Deibert accurately predicted that the news would trigger
reactions from both policymakers and ordinary citizens abroad, who would begin
to question their dependence on American technologies and the hidden
motivations behind the United States promotion of Internet Freedom. In some countries, the scandal would be used as an excuse
to revive dormant debates about dropping American companies from official
contracts, score
political points at the expense of the United States, and even justify local monitoring and surveillance. Deiberts speculation has so far
proven quite prescient. As we will describe in this section, the ongoing revelations have done significant damage to
the credibility of the U.S. Internet Freedom agenda and further jeopardized the
United States position in the global Internet governance debates.
Goldstein, Writer for the
Atlantic, 2014
[Gordon M. Goldstein, The End of the Internet?, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/07/the-end-of-the-internet/372301/]
If the long history of
international commerce tells us anything, it is this: free trade is neither a
natural nor an inevitable condition. Typically, trade has flourished when a single, dominant country has
provided the security and will to sustain it. In the absence of a strong
liberal ethos, promoted and enforced by a global leader, states seem drawn, as if by some spell, toward a variety
of machinations (tariffs, quotas, arcane product requirements) that provide immediate advantages to a few domestic
companies or industries—and that lead to
collective immiseration over time. The U.S.
has played a special role in the development of the Internet. The
Department of Defense fostered ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. As the
network evolved, American companies were quick to exploit its growth, gaining a
first-mover advantage that has in many cases grown into global dominance. A vast proportion of the worlds Web traffic passes
through American servers. Laura DeNardis, a scholar of Internet
governance at American University, argues that the Internets character is
inherently commercial and private today. The Internet is a collection of
independent systems, she writes, operated by mostly private companies,
including large telecommunications providers like AT&T and giant content
companies such as Google and Facebook. All of these players make the Internet
function through private economic agreements governing the transmission of data
among their respective networks. While the U.S.
government plays a role—the worlds central repository for domain
names, for instance, is a private nonprofit organization created at the United
States urging in 1998, and operating under a contract administered by the
Department of Commerce—it has applied a light
touch. And why wouldnt it? The Webs growth has been broadly congenial to
American interests, and a large boon to the American economy. That brings us to
Edward Snowden and the U.S. National Security
Agency. Snowdens disclosures of the NSAs
surveillance of international Web traffic have provoked worldwide outrage and a
growing counterreaction. Brazil and the European Union recently announced plans
to lay a $185 million undersea fiber-optic communications cable between them to
thwart U.S. surveillance. In February, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called
for the European Union to create its own regional Internet, walled off from the
United States. Well talk to France about how we can maintain a high level of
data protection, Merkel said. Above all, well talk about European providers
that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldnt have to send
e-mails and other information across the Atlantic. Merkels exploration of a
closed, pan-European cloud-computing network is simply the latest example of
what the analyst Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation calls data nationalism, a phenomenon gathering momentum whereby
countries require that certain types of information be stored on servers within
a states physical borders. The nations that have already implemented a
patchwork of data-localization requirements range from Australia, France, South
Korea, and India to Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Vietnam, according to
Anupam Chander and Uyen P. Le, two legal scholars at the University of
California at Davis. Anxieties over surveillance are justifying governmental
measures that break apart the World Wide Web, they wrote in a recent white paper.
As a result, the era of a global Internet may be passing. Security
concerns have catalyzed data-nationalization efforts, yet Castro, Chander,
and Le all question the benefits, arguing that the security of data depends not
on their location but on the sophistication of the defenses built around them.
Another motive appears to be in play: the Webs
fragmentation would enable local Internet businesses in France or
Malaysia to carve out roles for themselves, at the
expense of globally dominant companies, based disproportionately in the
United States. Castro estimates that the U.S. cloud-computing industry alone
could lose $22 billion to $35 billion in revenue by 2016. The Snowden affair has brought to a boil geopolitical
tensions that were already simmering. Autocracies, of course, have long regulated the flow of Internet data, with China
being the most famous example. But today such states are being joined by
countries across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe in calling for dramatic
changes in the way the Web operates, even beyond the question of where data are
stored.
Ray, Security Analyst at 21CT,
2014
[Tim ray, The Balkanization of the Internet, http://www.21ct.com/blog/the-revolution-will-not-be-tweeted-the-balkanization-of-the-internet-part-2/]
NSA SURVEILLANCE STIRS THE POT (AND PROVIDES COVER)
While countries are struggling with their own versions of
this scenario and with how to spin this
frightening picture of the new Balkanized Internet,
they were handed a great gift: Edward Snowdens tales of NSAs global surveillance operations.
Suddenly, theres a common enemy:
America. Globally adventurous, the Americans (it seems) are also
watching everyone they can, sometimes without permission. Snowdens revelations alone will not be enough to
force through the kinds of national controls were talking about, but they are a great start, a unifying force.
Sound farfetched? Maybe. Are there other answers? Perhaps. Brazil is moving forward with nationalizing its email
services as well as plans to store all data within the countrys borders.
The idea there is the same as the example above: take
essential services in-country in order to prevent the U.S. from spying on them
and (as a side effect) control them too. These
proposals seem to be receiving some popular support; many see it as akin to
nationalizing their oil, or another resource. Taking local control of formerly
global services is the beginning of Balkanization for countries that choose
that path.
Schneier, 13 (Bruce,
cryptographer and computer security specialist, fellow at the Berkman Center
for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Stalker Economy Is Here To
Stay, November 2013. http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/20/opinion/schneier-stalker-economy/index.html)
Google recently announced that it
would start including individual users' names and photos in some ads. This
means that if you rate some product positively, your friends may see ads for
that product with your name and photo attached -- without your knowledge or
consent. Meanwhile, Facebook is eliminating a feature that allowed people to
retain some portions of their anonymity on its website. These changes come on the heels of Google's move to
explore replacing tracking cookies with something that users have even less
control over. Microsoft is doing something similar by developing its own
tracking technology. More
generally, lots of companies are evading the "Do Not Track" rules,
meant to give users a say in whether companies track them. Turns out the whole
"Do Not Track" legislation has been a sham. It shouldn't come as a surprise that big technology
companies are tracking us on the Internet even more aggressively than before.
If these features don't sound particularly
beneficial to you, it's because you're not the customer of any of these companies.
You're the product, and you're being improved for their actual customers: their
advertisers. This is
nothing new. For years, these sites and others have systematically
improved their "product" by reducing user privacy. This
excellent infographic, for example, illustrates how Facebook has done so over
the years. The "Do
Not Track" law serves as a sterling example of how bad things are. When it
was proposed, it was supposed to give users the right to demand that Internet
companies not track them. Internet companies fought hard against the law, and
when it was passed, they fought to ensure that it didn't have any benefit to
users. Right now, complying is entirely voluntary, meaning that no Internet
company has to follow the law. If a company does, because it wants the PR
benefit of seeming to take user privacy seriously, it can still track its
users. Really: if you
tell a "Do Not Track"-enabled company that you don't want to be
tracked, it will stop showing you personalized ads. But your activity will be
tracked -- and your personal information collected, sold and used -- just like
everyone else's. It's best to think of it as a "track me in secret"
law. Of course, people
don't think of it that way. Most people aren't fully
aware of how much of their data is collected by these sites. And, as the "Do Not Track" story
illustrates, Internet companies are doing their best to keep it that
way. The result is a world where our most
intimate personal details are collected and stored. I used to say that Google
has a more intimate picture of what I'm thinking of than my wife does. But
that's not far enough: Google has a more intimate picture than I do. The
company knows exactly what I am thinking about, how much I am thinking about
it, and when I stop thinking about it: all from my Google searches. And it
remembers all of that forever. As the Edward Snowden revelations continue to expose the full extent of the National Security Agency's
eavesdropping on the Internet, it has become increasingly obvious
how much of that has been enabled by the corporate world's existing
eavesdropping on the Internet. The public/private surveillance partnership is fraying, but it's
largely alive and well. The NSA didn't build its eavesdropping system from
scratch; it got itself a copy of what the corporate world was already
collecting. There are a lot of
reasons why Internet surveillance is so prevalent and pervasive. One, users like free things, and don't realize how
much value they're giving away to get it. We know that "free" is a
special price that confuses peoples' thinking. Google's 2013 third quarter revenue was nearly $15
billion with profit just under $3 billion. That profit is the difference
between how much our privacy is worth and the cost of the services we receive
in exchange for it. Two,
Internet companies deliberately make privacy not salient. When you log onto
Facebook, you don't think about how much personal information you're revealing
to the company; you're chatting with your friends. When you wake up in the morning, you don't think about how
you're going to allow a bunch of companies to track you throughout the day; you
just put your cell phone in your pocket. And three, the Internet's winner-takes-all market means that
privacy-preserving alternatives have trouble getting off the ground. How many
of you know that there is a Google alternative called DuckDuckGo that doesn't
track you? Or that you can use cut-out sites to anonymize your Google queries?
I have opted out of Facebook, and I know it affects my social life.
There are two types of changes
that need to happen in order to fix this. First, there's the market change. We
need to become actual customers of these sites so we can use purchasing power
to force them to take our privacy seriously. But that's not enough. Because of
the market failures surrounding privacy, a second change is needed. We need
government regulations that protect our privacy by limiting what these sites
can do with our data. Surveillance is
the business model of the Internet -- Al Gore recently called it a
"stalker economy." All major websites run on advertising, and the
more personal and targeted that advertising is, the more revenue the site gets
for it. As long as we users remain the product, there is minimal incentive for
these companies to provide any real privacy.
McDowell, Commission of the FCC,
2012
[Robert M. McDowell, The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204792404577229074023195322]
Merely saying "no" to any changes to the current
structure of Internet governance is likely to be a losing proposition. A more
successful strategy would be for proponents of Internet freedom and prosperity
within every nation to encourage a dialogue among all interested parties,
including governments and the ITU, to broaden the multi-stakeholder umbrella
with the goal of reaching consensus to address reasonable concerns. As part of
this conversation, we should underscore the tremendous benefits that the
Internet has yielded for the developing world through the multi-stakeholder
model. Upending this model with a new regulatory
treaty is likely to partition the Internet as some countries would
inevitably choose to opt out. A balkanized Internet would be devastating to
global free trade and national sovereignty. It
would impair Internet growth most severely in the developing world but also
globally as technologists are forced to seek bureaucratic permission to
innovate and invest. This would also undermine the
proliferation of new cross-border technologies, such as cloud computing.
A top-down, centralized, international regulatory
overlay is antithetical to the architecture of the Net, which is a global
network of networks without borders. No
government, let alone an intergovernmental body, can make engineering and economic decisions in
lightning-fast Internet time. Productivity,
rising living standards and the spread of freedom everywhere, but especially in
the developing world, would grind to a halt as engineering and business
decisions become politically paralyzed within a global regulatory body. Any attempts to expand intergovernmental powers over the
Internet—no matter how incremental or seemingly innocuous—should be turned back. Modernization and reform can
be constructive, but not if the end result is a new global bureaucracy that
departs from the multi-stakeholder model. Enlightened
nations should draw a line in the sand against new regulations while
welcoming reform that could include a nonregulatory role for the ITU.
Alford, Senior Program Officer,
Internet Freedom, Freedom House, 2014
[Gigi Alford, State Partitioning of the Internet Harms Users
Everywhere, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/freedom-house/state-partitioning-of-the_b_5843162.html]
For as long as the global internet has withstood attempts by
states to subjugate its cables, servers, and protocols, the virtual world has
been a refuge for users who are deprived of their fundamental freedoms offline.
This boon of technology is what led UN experts to declare the internet an
indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights and to debate whether
access to such an engine of human progress constitutes a right in itself. However,
since Edward Snowden
disclosed documents on secret U.S. and
British data-collection programs, the internet has
faced intensified challenges from all sides—some genuine and
others opportunistic—that could lead states to
partition the digital commons into national and regional demesnes. An internet
that is fragmented by political, legal, and technical boundaries would throttle the animating purpose of the
International Bill of Human Rights, while an indivisible and global
internet is able to facilitate such goals. As states
fully fathom the internets disruptive power and rush to impose choke points in
the name of national sovereignty, the digital world increasingly mirrors the
analog worlds human rights deficiencies, which it once transcended. The
virtual refuge is being dismantled, and for individuals on the wrong side of
the new borders, it has been replaced with separate and unequal splinternets.
Such digital apartheid flies in the face of the
universality of human rights, and it contradicts international jurisprudence
that rejects separate-but-equal regimes. As the UN Human Rights Council
has affirmed, the same rights that people have offline must also be protected
online. Champions of a unified internet are putting forth strong economic and
geopolitical arguments to counter these challenges—including earlier this
month at the ninth annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Istanbul, Turkey,
and next month at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU)
plenipotentiary meeting in Busan, South Korea. But stakeholders often miss the
bigger picture when they overlook the human rights case against a Westphalian
web model of internet governance.
McDowell, FCC Chair, 2012
[5/31/31, Comm'r. McDowell's Congressional Testimony,
http://www.fcc.gov/document/commr-mcdowells-congressional-testimony-5-31-2012]
It is a pleasure and an honor to testify beside my friend,
Ambassador Phil Verveer. First, please allow me to dispense quickly and
emphatically any doubts about the bipartisan resolve of the United States to
resist efforts to expand the International Telecommunication Unions (ITU)
authority over Internet matters. Some ITU officials have dismissed our concern
over this issue as mere election year politics. Nothing could be further from
the truth as evidenced by Ambassador Verveers testimony today as well as
recent statements from the White House, Executive Branch agencies, Democratic
and Republican Members of Congress and my friend and colleague, FCC Chairman
Julius Genachowski. We are unified on the substantive arguments and have always
been so. Second, it is important to define the
challenge before us. The threats are real and not imagined, although they
admittedly sound like works of fiction at times. For many years now, scores of
countries led by China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many others, have
pushed for, as then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said almost a
year ago, international control of the Internet
through the ITU.1 I have tried to find a more concise way to express
this issue, but I cant seem to improve upon now-President Putins
crystallization of the effort that has been afoot for quite some time. More
importantly, I think we should take President Putin very seriously. 1 Vladimir
Putin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Working Day, GOVT OF THE
RUSSIAN FEDN, http://premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/15601/ (June 15, 2011)
(last visited May 14, 2012). Six months separate us from the renegotiation of
the 1988 treaty that led to insulating the Internet from economic and technical
regulation. What proponents of Internet freedom do
or dont do between now and then will determine the fate of the Net, affect
global economic growth and determine whether political liberty can proliferate.
During the treaty negotiations, the most lethal
threat to Internet freedom may not come from
a full frontal assault, but through insidious and
seemingly innocuous expansions of intergovernmental powers. This
subterranean effort is already under way. While influential ITU Member States
have put forth proposals calling for overt legal expansions of United Nations
or ITU authority over the Net, ITU officials have publicly declared that the
ITU does not intend to regulate Internet governance while also saying that any
regulations should be of the light-touch variety.2 But which is it? It is not
possible to insulate the Internet from new rules while also establishing a new light
touch regulatory regime. Either a new legal paradigm will emerge in December
or it wont. The choice is binary. Additionally, as a threshold matter, it is
curious that ITU officials have been opining on the outcome of the treaty
negotiation. The ITUs Member States determine the fate of any new rules, not
ITU leadership and staff. I remain hopeful that the diplomatic process will not
be subverted in this regard. As a matter of process and substance, patient and
persistent incrementalism is the Nets most dangerous enemy and it is the
hallmark of many countries that are pushing the proregulation agenda.
Specifically, some ITU officials and Member States have been discussing an
alleged worldwide phone numbering crisis. It seems that the world may be running
out of phone numbers, over which the ITU does have some jurisdiction. 2 Speech
by ITU Secretary-General Tour, The Challenges of Extending the Benefits of
Mobile (May 1,
2012),http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/index.aspx?lang=en (last
visited May 29, 2012). 2 Today, many phone numbers are used for voice over
Internet protocol services such as Skype or Google Voice. To function properly,
the software supporting these services translate traditional phone numbers into
IP addresses. The Russian Federation has proposed that the ITU be given
jurisdiction over IP addresses to remedy the phone number shortage.3 What is
left unsaid, however, is that potential ITU jurisdiction over IP addresses
would enable it to regulate Internet services and devices with abandon. IP
addresses are a fundamental and essential component to the inner workings of
the Net. Taking their administration away from the bottomup, non-governmental,
multi-stakeholder model and placing it into the hands of international bureaucrats
would be a grave mistake. Other efforts to expand the ITUs reach into the
Internet are seemingly small but are tectonic in scope. Take for example the
Arab States submission from February that would change the rules definition
of telecommunications to include processing or computer functions.4 This
change would essentially swallow the Internets functions with only a tiny edit
to existing rules.5 When ITU leadership claims that no Member States have
proposed absorbing Internet governance into the ITU or other intergovernmental
entities, the Arab States submission demonstrates that nothing could be
further from the truth. An infinite number of avenues exist to 3 Further
Directions for Revision of the ITRs, Russian Federation, CWG-WCIT12 Contribution
40, at 3 (2011), http://www.itu.int/md/T09-CWG.WCIT12-C-0040/en (last visited
May 29, 2012) (To oblige ITU to allocate/distribute some part of IPv6
addresses (as same way/principle as for telephone numbering, simultaneously
existing of many operators/numbers distributors inside unified numbers space
for both fixed and mobile phone services) and determination of necessary
requirements.). 4 Proposed Revisions, Arab States, CWG-WCIT12 Contribution 67,
at 3 (2012), http://www.itu.int/md/T09CWG.WCIT12-C-0067/en (last visited May
29, 2012). 5 And Iran argues that the current definition already includes the
Internet. Contribution from Iran, The Islamic Republic of Iran, CWG-WCIT12
Contribution 48, Attachment 2 (2011), http://www.itu.int/md/T09-CWG.WCIT12C-0048/en
(last visited May 29, 2012). 3 accomplish the same goal and it is camouflaged
subterfuge that proponents of Internet freedom should watch for most
vigilantly. Other examples come from China. China would like to see the
creation of a system whereby Internet users are registered using their IP
addresses. In fact, last year, China teamed up with Russia, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan to propose to the UN General Assembly that it create an
International Code of Conduct for Information Security to mandate international
norms and rules standardizing the behavior of countries concerning information
and cyberspace.6 Does anyone here today believe that these countries
proposals would encourage the continued proliferation of an open and
freedom-enhancing Internet? Or would such constructs make it easier for
authoritarian regimes to identify and silence political dissidents? These
proposals may not technically be part of the WCIT negotiations, but they give a
sense of where some of the ITUs Member States would like to go. Still other
proposals that have been made personally to me by foreign government officials
include the creation of an international universal service fund of sorts
whereby foreign – usually state-owned – telecom companies would use
international mandates to charge certain Web destinations on a per-click
basis to fund the build-out of broadband infrastructure across the globe.
Google, iTunes, Facebook and Netflix are mentioned most often as prime sources
of funding. In short, the U.S. and like-minded
proponents of Internet freedom and prosperity across the globe should resist
efforts to expand the powers of intergovernmental bodies over the Internet 6
Letter dated 12 September 2011 from the Permanent Representatives of China, the
Russian Federation, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the United Nations addressed
to the Secretary-General, Item 93 of the provisional agenda - Developments in
the field of information and telecommunications in the context of international
security, 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Annex (Sep. 14,
2011),
http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1800/sources/2012_UN_Russia_and_China_Code_o_Conduct.pdf
(last visited May 29, 2012). even in the smallest of ways. As my supplemental
statement and analysis explains in more detail below, such a scenario would be devastating to global
economic activity, but it would hurt the
developing world the most. Thank you for the opportunity to appear
before you today and I look forward to your questions. Thank you, Chairman
Walden and Ranking Member Eshoo, for holding this hearing. Its topic is among
the most important public policy issues affecting global commerce and political
freedom: namely, whether the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), or
any other intergovernmental body, should be allowed to expand its jurisdiction
into the operational and economic affairs of the Internet. As we head toward
the treaty negotiations at the World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai in December, I urge governments around the
world to avoid the temptation to tamper with the Internet. Since its
privatization in the early 1990s, the Internet has
flourished across the world under the current deregulatory framework. In fact,
the long-standing international consensus has been to keep governments from
regulating core functions of the Internets ecosystem. Yet, some nations, such as China, Russia, India, Iran
and Saudi Arabia, have been pushing to reverse this
course by giving the ITU or the United Nations itself, regulatory jurisdiction over Internet governance.
The ITU is a treaty-based organization under the auspices of the United
Nations.1 Dont take my word for it, however. As Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin said almost one year ago, the goal of this well-organized and
energetic effort is to establish international control over the Internet using
the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the [ITU].2 Motivations of some
ITU Member states vary. Some of the arguments in support of such actions may
stem from frustrations with the operations of Internet Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN). Any concerns regarding ICANN, however, should not be
used as a pretext to end the multi-stakeholder model that has served all
nations – especially the developing world – so well. Any reforms to
ICANN should take place through the bottom-up multi-stakeholder process and
should not arise through the WCITs examination of the International
Telecommunication Regulations (ITR)s. Constructive reform of the ITRs may be
needed. If so, the scope of any review should be limited to traditional
telecommunications services and not expanded to include information services or
any form of Internet services. Modification of the current multistakeholder
Internet governance model may be necessary as well, but we should all work
together to ensure no intergovernmental regulatory overlays are placed into
this sphere. Not only would nations surrender some of their national
sovereignty in such a pursuit, but they would suffocate their own economies as
well, while politically paralyzing engineering and business decisions within a
global regulatory body. 1 History, IThttp://www.itu.int/en/about/Pages/history.aspx">U,
http://www.itu.int/en/about/Pages/history.aspx (last visited May 14, 2012). 2
Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Working Day, GOVT OF
THE RUSSIAN FEDN, http://premier.gov.ru/eng/events/news/15601/ (June 15, 2011)
(last visited May 14, 2012). Every day headlines tell us about industrialized
and developing nations alike that are awash in debt, facing flat growth curves,
or worse, shrinking GDPs. Not only must governments,
including our own, tighten their fiscal belts, but they must also spur economic
expansion. An unfettered Internet offers the brightest ray of hope
for growth during this dark time of economic
uncertainty, not more regulation. Indeed, we
are at a crossroads for the Internets future. One path holds great promise,
while the other path is fraught with peril. The promise, of course, lies with
keeping what works, namely maintaining a freedom-enhancing and open Internet
while insulating it from legacy regulations. The peril lies with changes that
would ultimately sweep up Internet services into decades-old ITU paradigms. If
successful, these efforts would merely imprison the future in the regulatory
dungeon of the past. The future of global growth and political freedom lies with
an unfettered Internet. Shortly after the Internet was privatized in
1995, a mere 16 million people were online worldwide.3 As of early 2012,
approximately 2.3 billion people were using the Net.4 Internet connectivity quickly evolved from being a novelty
in industrialized countries to becoming an essential tool for commerce –
and sometimes even basic survival – in all nations, but especially in the
developing world. Such explosive growth was helped, not hindered, by a
deregulatory construct. Developing nations stand to gain the most from the
rapid pace of deployment and adoption of Internet technologies brought forth by
an Internet free from intergovernmental regulation. By way of
illustration, a McKinsey report released in January examined the Nets effect
on the developing world, or aspiring countries.5 In 30 specific aspiring
countries studied, including Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Turkey and
Vietnam,6 Internet penetration has grown 25 percent per year for the past five
years, compared to only five percent per year in developed nations.7 Obviously,
broadband penetration is lower in aspiring countries than in the developed
world, but that is quickly changing thanks to mobile Internet access
technologies. Mobile subscriptions in developing countries have risen from 53
percent of the global market in 2005 to 73 percent in 2010.8 In fact, Cisco
estimates that the number of mobile-connected devices will exceed the worlds
population sometime this year.9 Increasingly, Internet users in these countries
use only mobile devices for their Internet access.10 This trend has resulted in
developing countries growing their global share of Internet users from 33
percent in 2005, to 52 percent in 2010, with a projected 61 percent share by
2015.11 The 30 aspiring countries discussed earlier are home to one billion
Internet users, half of all global Internet users. The
effect that rapidly growing Internet connectivity is having on aspiring
countries economies is tremendous. The Net is an economic growth accelerator.
It contributed an average 1.9 percent of GDP growth in aspiring countries
for an estimated total of $366 billion in 2010.13 In some developing economies,
Internet connectivity has contributed up to 13
percent of GDP growth over the past five years.14 In six aspiring
countries alone, 1.9 million jobs were associated with the Internet.15 And in
other countries, the Internet creates 2.6 new jobs for each job it disrupts.16
I expect that we would all agree that these positive trends must continue. The best path forward is the one that has served the
global economy so well, that of a multi-stakeholder governed Internet. One
potential outcome that could develop if pro-regulation nations are successful
in granting the ITU authority over Internet governance would be a partitioned
Internet. In particular, fault lines could be drawn between countries
that will choose to continue to live under the current successful model and
those Member States who decide to opt out to place themselves under an
intergovernmental regulatory regime. A balkanized
Internet would not promote global free trade or increase living standards. At a
minimum, it would create extreme uncertainty and raise costs for all users
across the globe by rendering an engineering, operational and financial morass.
For instance, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) recently announced placing many of their courses online for free –
for anyone to use. The uncertainty and economic and
engineering chaos associated with a newly politicized intergovernmental legal
regime would inevitably drive up costs as cross border traffic and
cloud computing become more complicated and
vulnerable to regulatory arbitrage. Such costs are always passed on to
the end user consumers and may very well negate the ability of content and
application providers such as Harvard and MIT to offer first-rate educational
content for free. Nations that value freedom and
prosperity should draw a line in the sand against new regulations while
welcoming reform that could include a non-regulatory role for the ITU. Venturing into the uncertainty of a new regulatory
quagmire will only undermine developing nations the most.
Sterman et al 14 (1/13/14;
David Sterman is a program associate at New America and holds a master's degree
from Georgetowns Center for Security Studies; Emily Schneider is a senior
program associate for the International Security Program at New America; Peter Bergen
is CNN's national security analyst, a Professor of Practice at Arizona State
University and a fellow at Fordham University's Center on National Security. He
is the editor of the South Asia Channel and South Asia Daily Brief on
foreignpolicy.com and is a contributing editor at The New Republic and Foreign
Policy and he writes a weekly column for CNN.com. He is a member of the
Homeland Security Project, a successor to the 9/11 Commission, and also of the
Aspen Homeland Security Group.) DO NSA'S BULK SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS STOP
TERRORISTS? https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/do-nsas-bulk-surveillance-programs-stop-terrorists/
(xo1)
On June 5, 2013, the Guardian broke the first story in what
would become a flood of revelations regarding the extent and nature of the
NSAs surveillance programs. Facing an uproar over the threat such programs
posed to privacy, the Obama administration scrambled to defend them as legal
and essential to U.S. national security and counterterrorism. Two weeks after
the first leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were published,
President Obama defended the NSA surveillance programs during a visit to
Berlin, saying: We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because
of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats
here in Germany. So lives have been saved. Gen. Keith Alexander, the director
of the NSA, testified before Congress that: the information gathered from
these programs provided the U.S. government with critical leads to help prevent
over 50 potential terrorist events in more than 20 countries around the world.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, said on the House floor in July that 54 times [the NSA programs]
stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe – saving
real lives. However, our review of the governments
claims about the role that NSA bulk surveillance of phone and email
communications records has had in keeping the
United States safe from
terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading. An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited
by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or
inspired by al-Qaedas ideology, and charged in the
United States with an act of
terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative
methods, such
as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence
operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of
cases, while the contribution of NSAs bulk
surveillance programs to these cases was minimal. Indeed, the
controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes
the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and
date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT
Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent
of these cases. NSA programs involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons
outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act
played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA
surveillance under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of
the cases we examined. Regular FISA warrants not issued in connection with
Section 215 or Section 702, which are the traditional means for investigating
foreign persons, were used in at least 48 (21 percent) of the cases we looked
at, although its unclear whether these warrants played an initiating role or
were used at a later point in the investigation. (Click on the link to go to a
database of all 225 individuals, complete with additional details about them
and the governments investigations of these cases:
http://natsec.newamerica.net/nsa/analysis). Surveillance of American phone metadata has had no discernible impact on preventing
acts of terrorism and only the most marginal of impacts on preventing terrorist-related
activity, such as fundraising for a terrorist group. Furthermore, our
examination of the role of the database of U.S. citizens telephone metadata in
the single plot the government uses to justify the importance of the program
– that of Basaaly Moalin, a San Diego cabdriver who in 2007 and 2008
provided $8,500 to al-Shabaab, al-Qaedas affiliate in Somalia – calls
into question the necessity of the Section 215 bulk collection program.
According to the government, the database of American phone metadata allows
intelligence authorities to quickly circumvent the traditional burden of proof
associated with criminal warrants, thus allowing them to connect the dots
faster and prevent future 9/11-scale attacks. Yet in the Moalin case, after using the NSAs phone
database to link a number in Somalia to Moalin, the FBI waited two months to
begin an investigation and wiretap his phone. Although its unclear why there
was a delay between the NSA tip and the FBI wiretapping, court documents show
there was a two-month period in which the FBI was not monitoring Moalins
calls, despite official statements that the bureau had Moalins phone number
and had identified him. , This undercuts the
governments theory that the database of Americans telephone metadata is
necessary to expedite the investigative process, since it clearly didnt expedite the process in the single case the government
uses to extol its virtues. Additionally, a careful review of three of
the key terrorism cases the government has cited to defend NSA bulk
surveillance programs reveals that government officials have exaggerated the
role of the NSA in the cases against David Coleman Headley and Najibullah Zazi,
and the significance of the threat posed by a notional plot to bomb the New York
Stock Exchange. In 28 percent of the cases we reviewed, court records and
public reporting do not identify which specific methods initiated the
investigation. These cases, involving 62 individuals, may have been initiated
by an undercover informant, an undercover officer, a family member tip, other
traditional law enforcement methods, CIA- or FBI-generated intelligence, NSA
surveillance of some kind, or any number of other methods. In 23 of these 62
cases (37 percent), an informant was used. However, we were unable to determine
whether the informant initiated the investigation or was used after the
investigation was initiated as a result of the use of some other investigative
means. Some of these cases may also be too recent to have developed a public
record large enough to identify which investigative tools were used. We have
also identified three additional plots that the government has not publicly
claimed as NSA successes, but in which court records and public reporting
suggest the NSA had a role. However, it is not clear whether any of those three
cases involved bulk surveillance programs. Finally, the
overall problem for U.S. counterterrorism officials is not that they need
vaster amounts of information from the bulk surveillance programs, but
that they dont sufficiently understand or widely
share the information they already possess that was derived from conventional
law enforcement and intelligence techniques. This was true for two of the 9/11 hijackers who were known to be in the
United States before the attacks on New York and Washington, as well as with the case of Chicago resident David
Coleman Headley, who helped plan the 2008 terrorist
attacks in Mumbai, and it is the unfortunate pattern we have also seen
in several other significant terrorism cases.
LI 05
Department of Political Science, The Pennsylvania State University
[Quan
Li, Does Democracy Promote or Reduce Transnational Terrorist Incidents?, The
Journal of Conflict Resolution49. 2 (Apr 2005): 278-297]
CONCLUSION Two main arguments in the democracy-terrorism
literature expect contradictory effects of democracy on transnational
terrorism. Previous empirical work, however, has relied on using some aggregate
indicator of regime type, failing to separate the positive and negative effects
of democracy. In this article, I investigate the various mechanisms by which
democracy affects transnational terrorism. New theoretical mechanisms are
advanced that either complement or encompass existing arguments. First, democratic participation reduces transnational
terrorism in ways in addition to those conceived in the literature. It increases satisfaction and political efficacy of
citizens, reduces their grievances, thwarts terrorist recruitment, and raises
public tolerance of counterterrorist policies. Second, the institutional constraints over government play
a fundamental role in shaping the positive relationship between democracy and
transnational terrorism. Institutional checks and balances create
political deadlock, increase the frustration of marginal groups, impose on the
democratic government the tough task of protecting the general citizenry
against terrorist attacks, and weaken the government's ability to fight
terrorism. The effect of civil liberties on
terrorism popularized in the literature is more complex than commonly
recognized. Finally, heterogeneous democratic systems have different
implications for transnational terrorist activities. Effects of different aspects of democracy on transnational
terrorism are assessed in a multivariate analysis for a sample of about
119 countries from 1975 to 1997. Results show that democratic participation
reduces transnational terrorist incidents in a country. Government constraints,
subsuming the effect of press freedom, increase the number of terrorist
incidents in a country. The proportional representation system experiences
fewer transnational terrorist incidents than either the majoritarian or the mixed
system. Overall, democracy is demonstrated to
encourage and reduce transnational terrorist incidents, albeit via different
causal mechanisms. The findings suggest several important policy implications
for the war on terrorism. Democracy does not have a singularly positive effect
on terrorism as is often claimed and found. By
improving citizen satisfaction, electoral participation, and political
efficacy, democratic governments can reduce the number of terrorist incidents
within their borders. Limiting civil liberties does not lead to the
expected decline in terrorist attacks, as is sometimes argued. Restricting the freedom of press, movement, and
association does not decrease the number of transnational terrorist incidents.
Strategic terrorists simply select alternative modes
to engage in violence, as argued by Enders and Sandier (2002).
Matt Fay 13, PhD student in the history
department at Temple University, has a Bachelors degree in Political Science
from St. Xavier University and a Masters in International Relations and
Conflict Resolution with a minor in Transnational Security Studies from
American Military University, 7/18/13, The Ever-Shrinking Odds of Nuclear
Terrorism, webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:HoItCUNhbgUJ:hegemonicobsessions.com/%3Fp%3D902+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
For over a decade now, one of the most oft-repeated
threats raised by policymakers—the one that in many ways
justified the invasion of Iraq—has been that of nuclear
terrorism. Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations,
including the presidents themselves, have raised the specter of
the atomic terrorist. But beyond mere rhetoric, how
likely is a nuclear terrorist attack really? While pessimistic
estimates about Americas ability to avoid a nuclear terrorist attack became
something of a cottage industry following the September 11th attacks, a number
of scholars in recent years have pushed back
against this trend. Frank Gavin has put post-9/11 fears of
nuclear terrorism into historical context (pdf) and
argued against
the prevailing
alarmism. Anne Stenersen of the Norwegian Defence
Research Establishment has challenged the idea that al Qaeda was ever
bound and determined
to acquire a nuclear weapon. John
Mueller
ridiculed the notion of nuclear terrorism in his book Atomic
Obsessions and highlighted the numerous steps a terrorist
group would need to
take—all of which would have to be successful—in
order to procure, deliver, and detonate an atomic weapon. And in
his excellent, and exceedingly even-handed, treatment of the subject, On
Nuclear Terrorism, Michael Levi outlined the difficulties terrorists would
face building their own nuclear weapon and discussed how a
system of systems could be developed to interdict potential materials
smuggled into the United States—citing
a Murphys law of nuclear terrorism that could
possibly dissuade
terrorists from even trying in the first place.
But what about the possibility that a rogue state could transfer a nuclear
weapon to a terrorist group? That was ostensibly why the United States deposed
Saddam Husseins regime: fear he would turnover one of his hypothetical nuclear
weapons for al Qaeda to use. Enter into this discussion Keir Lieber and Daryl
Press and their article in the most recent edition of International Security,
Why States Wont Give Nuclear Weapons to Terrorists. Lieber and Press have
been writing on nuclear issues for just shy of a decade—doing innovative,
if controversial work on American nuclear strategy. However, I believe this is
their first venture into the debate over nuclear terrorism. And while others,
such as Mueller, have argued that states are unlikely to transfer nuclear
weapons to terrorists, this article is the first to tackle the
subject with an empirical analysis. The title of their article nicely sums up
their argument: states will not turn over nuclear
weapons terrorists.
To back up this claim, Lieber and Press attack the idea that states will
transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists because terrorists operate of absent a
return address. Based on an examination of attribution
following conventional terrorist attacks, the authors conclude: [N]either
a terror group nor a state sponsor would remain anonymous after a nuclear
attack. We draw this conclusion on the basis of four main
findings. First, data on a decade of terrorist incidents reveal a strong
positive relationship between the number of fatalities caused in a terror
attack and the likelihood of attribution. Roughly three-quarters of the attacks
that kill 100 people or more are traced back to the perpetrators. Second,
attribution rates are far higher for attacks on the U.S. homeland or the
territory of a major U.S. ally—97 percent (thirty-six of thirty-seven)
for incidents that killed ten or more people. Third, tracing culpability from a
guilty terrorist group back to its state sponsor is not likely to be difficult:
few countries sponsor terrorism; few terrorist groups have state sponsors; each
sponsor terrorist group has few sponsors (typically one); and only one country
that sponsors terrorism, has nuclear weapons or enough fissile material to
manufacture a weapon. In sum, attribution of nuclear
terror incidents would be easier than is typically suggested, and passing
weapons to terrorists would not offer countries escape from the
constraints of deterrence. From this analysis, Lieber and
Press draw two major implications for U.S. foreign policy: claims that it is
impossible to attribute nuclear terrorism to particular groups or potential
states sponsors undermines deterrence; and fear of states transferring nuclear
weapons to terrorist groups, by itself, does not justify extreme measures to
prevent nuclear proliferation. This is a key point. While there are other
reasons nuclear proliferation is undesirable, fears of nuclear terrorism
have been used to justify a wide-range of policies—up to,
and including, military action. Put in its proper
perspective however—given the difficulty in constructing and transporting a nuclear device
and the improbability of state transfer—nuclear terrorism hardly warrants the
type of exertions many alarmist assessments indicate it should.
Weinberger 9 (Seth Harold is
Associate Professor of Politics and Government at the University of Puget
Sound. He received his B.A. (1993) in political philosophy from the University
of Chicago, an M.A. (1995) in Security Studies from Georgetown University, and
an M.A. (2000) and Ph.D. (2005) in political science from Duke University) Restoring the balance: war powers in an
age of terror. ABC-CLIO, 2009. DOMESTIC
WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE BY THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY (xo1)
John Yoo makes the claim that
surveillance should be considered an inherently executive power because wars
unpredictability can demand decisive and secret action. Legislatures, he
argues, are too slow and its members too numerous
to respond effectively to unforeseen situations. Thus, he asserts,
surveillance, including the domestic
warrantless kind conducted by the NSA, should
be entirely under the purview of the president.67 There are two
implications made here: first, that it would have been too difficult and
time-consuming for the Bush administration to go to Congress in an effort to
get statutory authorization for its desired surveillance program; and second,
that going to Congress would have compromised the classified nature of the
program, alerting al Qaeda to the surveillance and undermining the efficacy of
the wiretapping.68 However, as Suzanne
Spaulding, a former general counsel to both the Senate and House Intelligence
Committees and former executive director of the National Terrorism Commission,
writes: This is not the first time the intelligence
community has needed a change in the law to allow it to undertake sensitive
intelligence activities that could not be disclosed. In the past, Congress and the administration have worked together
to find a way to accomplish what was needed. It was never considered
an option to simply decide that finding a
legislative solution was too hard and that the executive branch could just
ignore the law rather than fix it.69 Royce Lamberth, a federal judge who
was the chief of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 1995 to 2002,
concurs with Spauldings assessment, arguing that FISA was sufficiently
flexible to accommodate emergencies and to be adapted to function in new
circumstances. Lamberth describes how despite being stuck in traffic on
September 11 after one of the hijacked planes was crashed into the Pentagon he
was able to approve five FISA warrants on his cell phone. He goes on to assert
that in a time of national emergency like [September 11], changes have to be
made in procedures and that we changed a number of FISA procedures without
breaking its most basic rules and requirements.70 Yoos
argument is also belied by the eventual outcome of the fight over the NSA
program. In January 2007, just over a year after the publication by the
New York Times of the article that revealed the existence of the program, the
Bush administration gave up the fight to preserve its warrantless wiretapping
and agreed to give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court jurisdiction
over the NSAs domestic surveillance. A statement from the Justice Department
announcing the compromise stated that the government had worked out an
innovative arrangement with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that
provided the necessary speed and agility to provide court approval to monitor
international communications of people inside the United States without
jeopardizing national security.71 It was not that
the administration could not obtain
legislative authorization without endangering the country; it was that the
administration did not try or did
not try hard enough. Once forced by
congressional and public outrage to compromise, the administration was able to find a way to conduct the surveillance it
desired in a manner consistent with the law.
Zoha Waseem 8/26/13, A
freelance writer with a post-graduate degree from King's College London in MA
Terrorism and Security, 8/26/13, "Is Alqeada Dead or Thriving,"
http://blogs.thenews.com.pk/blogs/2013/08/is-alqeada-dead-or-thriving/
Is Al Qaeda weakened already? Obama is
but one of
many US officials who have argued
with relentless zeal that al Qaeda has been
globally weakened. Their narratives grossly exaggerated the
negative impacts of bin Ladens death on the organization; helped put Obamas
administration back in the White House a second time around; and justified
on-going operations in Afghanistan and Iraq that were becoming increasingly
unpopular within the American masses. Nothing could be more misleading
if we consider the evolution of al Qaeda over the years. On
11 August 2013, al Qaeda observed its silver jubilee. In its 25
years, al Qaeda has transformed from a
hierarchically structured combatant group to a flexible,
decentralised global ideology. Despite bin Ladens death, it has now expanded
exactly the way its founder had dreamed, a worldwide Islamic
revolution for which Zawahiri provides theological rhetoric and
oversight. AlQaedas new structure: Its
structure was dissolved ten years ago when US diverted focus from Kabul to
Baghdad, allowing al Qaeda fighters to regroup, reorganize and rid themselves
of their dependence on bin Laden. It was the most sensible and logical
enhancement of networking, in line with globally evolving war fronts and the
technological advancements introduced by the Internet. It was to be the most
flabbergasting transformation of old terrorism to new terrorism. And
still, the US and President Obama appear to have learned so little about
tackling ideological terrorism. Al Qaedas
so-called transfer
of terror to Yemen is not a new
development. It also cannot imply that central al
Qaeda is on the run. It simply provides the organization and the
US a new battleground in the War on Terror, where the US has decided to
implement another faulty counter-terrorism strategy: employing its beloved
drones.
From Pakistan to Yemen: Four years of bombings have
killed over 600 people in Yemen, while al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),
one of the organizations several international affiliates, remains
undeterred. This months unleashing of death by
drones came shortly after the closure of 19 embassies in response to Zawahiris
communication with Nasser al Wahayshi (AQAPs head, now al Qaedas general
manager). The conference call included eleven other jihadis, some from
Pakistan. The interceptions paint an intimidating picture.
Firstly, Zawahiris continued presence in Pakistan implies no
geographical shift in al Qaedas core to Yemen; it merely demonstrates the
expansion of its core. Shifting this core from areas surrounding
the Durand Line in current circumstances would be insensible. Should
Afghanistan erupt into a civil war post-withdrawal, the region could continue
providing the network the ideal environment and landscape necessary for
survival and maneuver.
Dan Kovalik 8, USW Counsel,
Workers Uniting Colombia Committee, "Rand Corp -- War On Terrorism Is A
Failure", July 31, www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/rand-corp----war-on-terro_b_116107.html
The Rand Corporation,
a conservative think-tank originally started by the U.S. Air Force, has
produced a new report entitled, "How Terrorist Groups End - Lessons for
Countering al Qaida." This study is important, for it reaches
conclusions which may be surprising to the Bush Administration
and to both presidential candidates. To wit, the study concludes that the
"war on terrorism" has been a failure,
and that the efforts against terrorism should not be characterized as a
"war" at all. Rather, Rand suggests that the U.S.
efforts at battling terrorism be considered, "counterterrorism"
instead. And, why is this so? Because, Rand concludes, after studying 648 terrorist
groups between 1968 and 2006, that military operations against such
groups are among the least effective means
of success, achieving
the desired effect
in only 7% of the cases. As Rand explains, "[a]gainst
most terrorist groups . . . military force is usually too blunt an instrument."
Moreover, "[t]he use of substantial U.S. military power against
terror groups also runs a significant risk of turning the local population
against the government by killing civilians." In
terms of this latter observation, there is no better case-in-point
right now than Afghanistan - the war that both candidates for
President seem to embrace as a "the right war" contrary to all
evidence. In Afghanistan, the U.S. military forces should properly be
known as, "The Wedding Crashers," with the U.S.
successfully bombing its fourth (4th) wedding party just this month, killing 47
civilians. According to the UN, 700 civilians have died in the Afghan conflict
just this year. Human Rights Watch reports that 1,633 Afghan civilians were
killed in 2007 and 929 in 2006. And, those killed in U.S. bomb attacks are
accounting for a greater and greater proportion of the civilian deaths as that
war goes on. As the Rand Corporation predicts in such circumstances, this
has only led to an increase in popular support for those resisting the U.S.
military onslaught. In short, the war is counterproductive.
Consequently, as the Rand study reports, the U.S. "war on terrorism"
has been a failure in combating al Qaida, and indeed, that "[a]l
Qaida's resurgence should trigger a fundamental rethinking of U.S.
counterterrorism strategy."
In the end, Rand concludes that the U.S. should rely much more
on local military forces to police their own countries, and that
this "means a light U.S. military footprint or none at all." If the
politicians take this study seriously, and they should, they should abandon
current plans for an increase in U.S. troop involvement in Afghanistan. Indeed,
the U.S. military should be pulled out of Afghanistan altogether, just as it
should be pulled out of Iraq. Interestingly, the current study from Rand,
a group not considered to be very dovish, mirrors its much earlier study which
also declared that the U.S.'s "war on drugs" - that is,
the effort to eradicate drugs at the source (e.g., cocaine in Colombia and
heroin in Afghanistan) thorugh military operations -- is a failure. Instead,
Rand opined, the U.S. would do better to concentrate its resources at home on
drug addiction treatment - a measure the Rand Corporation concluded is 20 times
more effective than the "war on drugs." Sadly, the
U.S. did not pay attention to that study then, and it remains to
be seen whether it will pay attention to Rand's current study.
Again, (and if you read my posts you will see me quote this passage often)
Senator Obama was correct, both as a matter of morality as well as
practicality, in calling for an "end [to] the mindset which leads us to
war." This is so because war has profoundly failed
us. Unfortunately however, the United States, and those running
for its highest office, appear unable to escape from this mindset. Instead,
they continue to
search for military options for problems which have no military solutions.
In the process, U.S. soldiers die and thousands upon thousands of civilians are
killed abroad. Meanwhile, the stated objective of the U.S.,
whether it be fighting drugs or fighting terror, is only further undermined. One
look no further than Al Qaida itself -- which evolved from the
U.S.'s military support for the Afghan mujahideen in pursuit of its "war
on communism" -- as proof of this fact. In
short, we continue
to create and re-create our own enemies through our addiction to
war and force. It is indeed high time to "end the mindset
which leads us to war." However, we as citizens in this
ostensible democracy will have to work hard to push our leaders toward this
end, for they appear unwilling and/or unable to even begin the process of
moving toward such an objective.
David Rothkopf 8/6/13 , CEO
and Editor at Large at Foreign Policy, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace where he chairs the Carnegie Economic
Strategy Roundtable, and has taught international affairs and national security
studies at Columbia and Georgetown, 8/6/13, The Real Risks, Foreign Policy,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/06/the_real_risks_
war_on_terror
With each passing day,
it becomes even clearer that despite what
appears to be a very serious current terrorist
threat, the greatest risks facing America come from our own
misplaced priorities and mistaken assumptions. As recently as
late last week, I spoke with a very senior administration official -- one of
the White House's best and brightest -- who forcefully described the significance
of America's successful destruction of "core" al Qaeda. White House
spokesman Jay Carney reiterated this point in comments to the press on Monday.
But two errors in that assessment have now become abundantly apparent. The
first is obvious given that the current alert is reportedly due in part to
communications between a still-active core al Qaeda led by Ayman al-Zawahiri
and lieutenants in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The second and
perhaps more important revelation is the enduring notion that al Qaeda could
effectively be defeated (or the risks associated with it could be contained) by
targeting its so-called core. A large part of the threat
associated with al
Qaeda has to do with the fact that it is not a traditional hierarchic
organization, operating with a structure that allows it to recover from
even heavy blows,
move to new locations, as well as reform and resume operations.
Further, of course, as we see the by-product of the upheaval throughout the
Arab world (in particular in places like Syria), extremists come in many forms
with many allegiances, so targeting
any one
organization doesn't necessarily reduce the threat.
On top of which, the spread of weak regimes and chaos in the
region actually accelerates the recruitment of
new fighters,
the development of new organizations (such as al-Nusra in Syria), and a
diffusion of risks that makes managing them even tougher. The
confluence of these last two factors is well illustrated by the fact that the
alleged Zawahiri communication was with al Qaeda's new "No.
2" -- its leader in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasser
al-Wuhayshi. Formerly Osama bin Laden's personal
secretary, Wuhayshi was imprisoned but escaped and moved to Yemen, one of the
region's weakest states. He has since taken the reins of a
steadily strengthening
local operation with global aspirations. (Ibrahim al-Asiri, the
31-year-old Saudi master bomb maker who was behind recent plots like the
underwear bombing and printer cartridge explosive device is reportedly also in
Yemen and part of AQAP.) Wuhayshi's escape from prison also happens to
underscore yet another of our misplaced priorities. While America has engaged
in an overly politicized and overly loud debate over the tragedy of last
September 11 in Benghazi, there has been precious little discussion over a much
more worrisome set of failures: the series of prison breaks at facilities
housing dangerous extremists. This list most recently includes
Abu Ghraib, a prison in Pakistan, and one outside of Benghazi. As a result of
just these last three breaks, reports say nearly 2,000 extremists have been
freed.
Mayberry 2/14/14 (Mark
– pursuing Law Degree, former soldier in Afghanistan) We are Winning the
War on Terror? Says Who? Read more at http://clashdaily.com/2014/02/winning-war-terror-says/#g75iQFMyo61WrqfM.99
Since 2001 we have been embroiled in a war against Al Qaeda.
Now as the conventional military forces wind down in Afghanistan, there is an ominous warning sign that we are about
to lose the entire Middle East. When
we left Iraq I made the speculation that Iraq was going to fall apart within
just a few years and now we are seeing that come to pass. Fallujah, the town
made famous by the epic battle between US Marines and insurgent forces, is now
under the control of those same insurgents. Many brave Marines lost their lives
taking that city and now Al Qaeda flags proudly fly over it. Just
yesterday, Sunni militants captured part of another
smaller town in Anbar province. An
Iraqi official did confirm that civilians were caught up in the fight and some
were injured. The fighting in Anbar has slowly
increased in the last year and it looks
as though the Iraqi
government is in danger of losing the province to
radical Al Qaeda linked Sunni militia groups.
As it is in all wars, civilians are suffering the most in Iraq since the last
US troops left the country. According to ABC news and the United Nations, an
estimated 8,868 Iraqis were killed in the fighting last year. That is the most
since the sectarian violence of 2007. Simply put the US mission in Iraq looks
as though it will never see fruition. More startling still is the level of
hostility and lack of cooperation coming from the Afghani government. This week the United States slammed Kabul after the government made a decision to
release 65 prisoners. These prisoners had
been linked to terrorist activities and had taken part in attacks on US and
coalition forces. The US Military released a statement out lining four
of the now released prisoners and what they had done. Mohammad Wali is
suspected of being a Taliban bomb expert and reportedly target ANSF and
coalition forces. He was biometrical linked and fingerprint matches to
explosive fragments found at IED blasts. Also when he was captured his clothes
tested positive for several types of explosive residues. Nek Mohammad was
arrested for planning and facilitating rocket attacks on coalition
installations. He was caught with several artillery rounds, mortars and IED
making materials including twenty-five pounds of a homemade explosive. Mohammadullah
is accused of being an IED expert. He is also believed to be a member of
Afghanistans infamous Haqqani network. He is believed to have built placed and
detonated IEDs in attacks on coalition forces. When he was detained his
personal items including the clothes he was wearing tested positive for four
types of explosives. Ehsanullah is a suspect high ranking commander of
the Haqqani network and was captured at the same time as Mohammadullah. He plans
high level IED attacks and was biometrical linked to a radio controlled IED and
also tested positive for two types of explosive residue. All four of these men, as well as the rest of the released
prisoners, are considered extremely dangerous by the
US government. The one thing all four of these men have in common is
that they were all basically caught red handed. However the reason for their release was that the Afghani Attorney
Generals office concluded that there was insufficient evidence against them. This is part of a disturbing trend in
Afghanistan where it is beginning to appear that some Islamic militants are
getting a free ride from the Kabul government for their crimes. What
does this mean for the United States? The breakdown of civilized life in many
of the Middle Eastern countries is something I have been closely monitoring and
studying for the past several years. What you are
seeing is the slow, steady toppling of secular leaders in the entire region.
Mubarak, Hussein, Gaddafi and in the near future Assad all had several things
in common. The most important being that they were the secular non-Islamist
pillars of the Middle East. They may have been
brutal and in many ways evil but they held the region back from the brink that
we are seeing today. Radical Islam is
going to engulf the entire region like a firestorm. When this happens it will
only be a matter of time before the US homeland is attacked again and we will
reenter the region just like in 2001,
back to the starting line. Barrack Obama may feel like we killed Osama bin
Laden and somehow this has decapitated Al Qaeda, but they havent seemed to have gotten that message. While
we are thinking our war is over our enemy views it as just beginning.
Lake 1/28/14 (Eli- senior
national-security correspondent for The Daily Beast. He previously covered
national security and intelligence for The Washington Times.) Obamas War on
Terror Muddle http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/28/obama-s-war-on-terror-muddle.html
The White House and its allies have taken great pains to
distinguish between the leadership of al Qaeda based in Pakistan and the threat
posed by its affiliates. Indeed in a recent New Yorker profile, Obama compared
such affiliates to junior varsity basketball players wearing Kobe Bryant
jerseys: it doesnt make them the Los Angeles Lakers This distinction has
allowed the White House to assert that at least core al Qaeda played no role in
the September 11, 2012 assault on the U.S. mission and CIA annex in Benghazi. The
core of al Qaeda, the group led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, is believed to be based
in Pakistan. Most experts agree that the organization has been forced into
hiding as a result of the CIAs drone war against the organization. Since the
killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 by U.S. special operations forces, the White
House has stressed publicly that the organization that that attacked the United
States on 9-11 is a shadow of its former self. But while al Qaedas core has been forced into hiding, the
groups affiliates have expanded their influence. Indeed noted terrorism
analyst, Peter Bergen earlier this month concluded that al Qaedas affiliates may control more territory at present than at any time in al
Qaedas history. At
issue is how the affiliates connect to the core, if they connect at all. As the
Daily Beast reported in August, U.S. intelligence agencies discovered an
Internet based conference of al Qaeda leaders and their affiliates that
suggests more coordination than at least President Obama implies In that
conference call, Zawahiri announced that a former close aid to bin Laden,
Nasser al-Wuhayshi, was taking over an operational role in the whole
organization. Michael Allen, who left his post this summer as the majority
staff director for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said,
I think there is definitely communications between
the core and nodes, the core certainly
provides ideological guidance. But the affiliates to some degree maybe are not taking as much tactical direction because of the
pressure since 9-11 under both Bush and Obama. Clear evidence of this rift can be found last
year in an exchange of letters between Zawahiri and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the
leader of al Qaedas Iraq affiliate. Zawahiri rejected Baghdadis request to
expand operations in Syria; but Baghdadi expanded operations there anyway. This
ultimately led to clashes with Jabhat al-Nusra, the organization Zawahiri hoped
would be al Qaedas affiliate for Syrias civil war. Will McCants, the director
of the project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at the Brookings
Institution, said, Core al-Qaeda is not dead until Zawahiri is dead. And even
when hes gone, the banner of the global jihadi movement will be taken up by
al-Qaedas affiliates and copycats. But whether those
copycats will be as ferocious as al Qaeda was in 2001 depends on the skill and
strength of the affiliated leaders. Seth Jones, the associate director
of the RAND Corporations International Security and Defense Policy Center,
said in Congressional testimony (PDF) last week that some al Qaeda affiliates
and Salafi groups pose a direct threat to the United States, while others for
now do not. U.S. policymakers should be
concerned about the number, size, and activity of al Qaeda and other
Salafi-jihadist groups, he said. Some of these
groups pose a direct threat to the U.S. homeland, embassies, and
citizens overseas, while others are currently targeting local regimes. Still, an effective U.S. strategy needs to begin with an honest
assessment of the problem.
Myers 9
[Zach Myers, JD Candidate, 2014, Georgetown University Law
Center.
http://zcmyers.blogspot.com/2009/01/yoo-vs-fisher-on-presidential-war.html
ETB]
Yoo is correct in
asserting that institutional flexibility
is necessary in dealing with rising globalization. Ironically, he looks for this flexibility in anachronistic models of international law
– i.e. John Lockes international state of nature. Flexibility is
necessary so far as it empowers law makers and the executive to enforce
international law, which is the essential element in stabilizing the rising
global order. Furthermore, this seemingly extra-constitutional
law must be binding to be effective. Fisher is correct, insofar,
as he agrees with Jacksons opinion that The Presidents power is at its lowest
ebb when he takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of
Congress (p. 265). Essentially, Curtiss-Wright correctly established that
[t]he president might act in internal affairs without congressional authority,
but not that [s]he might act contrary to an act of Congress. Since both Fisher
and Yoo agree that treaties are at least in part an act of legislation, then
the basic understanding of the relationship between legislative and executive
roles should control. Yoo resoundingly fails to create saliency with his
constitutional foreign policy framework. Fisher does a slightly better job by
requiring the executive to execute Congressional foreign policy directives.
Yoos textual analysis, however, trumps Fishers. Fisher is forced to awkwardly
adopt the extra-constitutional Presidential power to repel sudden attacks in
order to justify his framework. Without this extra-textual assertion, Fishers
framework would render the President completely helpless in the face of an
actual emergency (Yoo p. 159). This would be exactly the opposite of the
Framers intentions. When they wrote the constitution, they set up a government
specifically in order to deal with attacks – such as Shays rebellion
– which threatened to throw the nation into disarray.
To a large degree the opinions in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld support Fishers view of
the proper structuring of US foreign policy. The plurality says that detention
of individuals falling into the category were considering is so fundamental
and accepted as to be an exercise of the necessary and appropriate force
authorized by the AUMF (p. 518) The plurality shows some deference towards the
implied powers of the executive branch – point Yoo – but by not
directly addressing the question of Presidential power in the absence of
Congressional authority, the plurality tacitly accepts Fishers understanding
of Presidential war power only in cases of Congressional authorization.
Secondly, all the justices, with the exception of Thomas, agree that the
President does need Congressional authorization to indefinitely detain citizens. The inquiry naturally
devolves, then, to whether the AUMF was properly authorized the suspension of
habeas corpus rights. In response, even the
somewhat conciliatory plurality concludes that the
implied power of the executive does not provide sufficient legal ground for
perpetual detention of Hamdi (p. 521). We have long since made it
clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes
to the rights of the Nations citizens (p. 537). This
undermines somewhat Yoos assertion that the executive can use force without
the authorization of Congress.
William
G. Howell, Associate Prof Gov Dep @ Harvard 2005 (Unilateral Powers: A Brief
Overview;
Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 35, Issue: 3, Pg 417)
Plainly,
presidents
cannot institute every aspect of their policy agenda by decree. The
checks and balances that define our system of governance are alive,
though not always well, when presidents contemplate unilateral action. Should
the president proceed without statutory or constitutional authority, the
courts stand to overturn his actions, just as Congress can amend them, cut funding for their
operations, or eliminate them outright. (4) Even in those moments when
presidential power reaches its zenith--namely, during times of national
crisis--judicial and congressional prerogatives may be asserted
(Howell and Pevehouse 2005, forthcoming; Kriner, forthcoming; Lindsay 1995,
2003; and see Fisher's contribution to this volume). In 2004, as the nation
braced itself for another domestic terrorist attack and images of car bombings
and suicide missions filled the evening news, the courts extended new
protections to citizens deemed enemy combatants by the president, (5) as well
as noncitizens held in protective custody abroad. (6) And while Congress, as of
this writing, continues to authorize as much funding for the Iraq occupation as
Bush requests, members have imposed increasing numbers of restrictions on how
the money is to be spent.
Friedersdorf 13
(CONOR
FRIEDERSDORF, staff writer, Does Obama Really Believe He Can Limit the Next
President's Power? MAY 28 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/05/does-obama-really-believe-he-can-limit-the-next-presidents-power/276279/,
KB)
Obama doesn't seem to realize that his legacy won't be
shaped by any perspicacious limits he places on the executive branch, if he
ever gets around to placing any on it. The next president can just undo
those "self-imposed"
limits with the same wave of a hand that Obama uses to create them. His influence in
the realm of executive power will be to expand it. By 2016 we'll be four terms deep
in major policy decisions being driven by secret memos from the Office of Legal
Counsel. The White
House will have a kill list, and if the next president wants to add
names to it using standards twice as lax as Obama's, he or she can do it, in secret, per his precedent.
SEJ 9
(Society
of Environmental Journalists, Obama Orders Rollback of Bush Secrecy on 1st
Day January 22, 2009, http://www.sej.org/publications/watchdog-tipsheet/obama-orders-rollback-bush-secrecy-1st-day,
KB)
President Barack Obama signalled
that open access to
information will be a top priority for his administration on
January 21, 2009, his first full day in office. Obama
issued two memos
to all executive agencies and one executive order at a
Wednesday session open to reporters and cabinet members — all reversing
Bush-era secrecy directives.
Cooper 97
[Phillip, Professor of Poli Sci @ University of Vermont, Administration and
Society, Lexis]
Even if they serve temporary goals, executive orders can produce a
significant amount of complexity and conflict and not yield a long-term
benefit because the next president
may dispose of predecessors orders at a whim. It may be easier than moving a statute
through Congress and faster than waiting for agencies to use their rule-making processes to
accomplish policy ends, but executive orders may
ultimately be a much weaker foundation on which to build a policy than the
alternatives.
Moe and Howell 99
Terry
M. Moe (Professor of Political Science at Stanford University) and William G.
Howell (Graduate Student of Political Science at Stanford University) December
1999 Unilateral Action and Presidential Power: A Theory, Presidential Studies
Quarterly
There is one crucial
consideration, however, that we have yet to discuss and that gives Congress a
trump card of far-reaching consequence. This is the fact that Congress has the constitutional power to appropriate money--which
means that, to the extent that unilateral actions by presidents require
congressional funding, presidents are dependent on getting Congress to pass new
legislation that at least implicitly (via appropriations) supports what they are doing. When appropriations are
involved, in other words, presidents
cannot succeed by simply preventing Congress from acting. They can
only succeed if they can get Congress to act--which, of course, is much more difficult
and gives legislators far greater opportunities to shape or block what
presidents want to do.
Dan Primack February 17, 2011 Dan Primack is a senior editor at cnn.com reporting
from Wall Street to Sand Hill Valley Why Obama can't save infrastructure http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/17/why-obama-cant-save-infrastructure/
ek
Here are two things we all can agree on about America's
transportation infrastructure: (1) It is in desperate need of costly repairs,
and (2) Our political leaders cannot agree on how to pay for them. President Obama dove into the conversation this week, proposing $556 billion in new infrastructure spending
over the next six years. Not only would it include money for road and bridge
repair, but also high-speed rail development and the formation of a National
Infrastructure Bank that would (hopefully) prevent the next Bridge to Nowhere
from being federally funded. It is an important step, considering that the
American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the nation's 5-year
infrastructure investment need is approximately $2.2 trillion. Unfortunately, Obama didn't explain how the new spending
would be paid for. Increases in
transportation infrastructure spending traditionally have been paid for via gas
tax increases, but today's GOP orthodoxy is to oppose all new revenue
generators (even if this particular one originated with Ronald Reagan).
This isn't to say that Republicans don't believe the civil engineers –
it's just that they consider their version of fiscal discipline to be more
vital. In other words, America's infrastructure
needs are stuck in a holding pattern. That may be sustainable for a
while longer, but at some point we need to land this plane or it's going to
crash.
Terry M. Moe (Professor
of Political Science at Stanford University) and
William G. Howell (Graduate Student of Political
Science at Stanford University) December 1999
Unilateral Action and Presidential Power: A Theory, Presidential Studies
Quarterly
There is one crucial
consideration, however, that we have yet to discuss and that gives Congress a trump
card of far-reaching consequence. This is the fact that Congress has the constitutional power to appropriate money--which
means that, to the extent that unilateral actions by presidents require
congressional funding, presidents are dependent on getting Congress to pass new
legislation that at least implicitly (via appropriations) supports what they are doing. When appropriations are
involved, in other words, presidents
cannot succeed by simply preventing Congress from acting. They can
only succeed if they can get Congress to act--which, of course, is much more
difficult and gives legislators far greater opportunities to shape or block
what presidents want to do.
Leanna Anderson (clerk for
H.R. Lloyd, U.S. Magistrate) Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 2002
To be challengeable, an executive order must have the force and
effect of law. Under the United
States Code, federal court jurisdiction is limited to "federal
questions." "The district
courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the
Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States." For federal courts to have jurisdiction
over a civil action challenging an executive order, the order must have the
"force and effect of law."
There are two different branches of analysis under this requirement.
First, if the order is issued in accordance
with Congressional statutory mandate or delegation, the order has the force and
effect of law.
However, if the order is not
based on an express Congressional grant of authority, federal courts may either look for an implied Congressional
basis for the order or find that no
statutory basis exists so that the order does not have the force and effect of
law.
Rosen 98 [Colonel Richard, Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Army, Funding
"Non-Traditional" Military Operations: The Alluring Myth Of A
Presidential Power Of The Purse Military Law Review 155 Mil. L. Rev. 1, Lexis]
Finally, if a situation is sufficiently grave and an operation is
essential to national security, the
President has the raw, physical power--but not the legal authority--to spend public
funds without congressional approval, after which he or she can either seek
congressional approbation or attempt to weather the resulting political
storm. To the President's
immediate advantage is the fact that the only sure means of directly stopping
such unconstitutional conduct is impeachment. 703 Congress could, however,
[*149] certainly make a President's life miserable through other means, such as denying requested
legislation or appropriations, delaying confirmation of presidential
appointments, and conducting public investigations into the President's actions.
Winik 91 [Jay, Senior Research Fellow,
Natl Defense U, Washington Quarterly, Autumn, Lexis]
Thus, it is demonstrably clear that, in the absence of
bipartisanship, dealing with the
new international system will be
difficult at best and at
times next to impossible. Friends and foes alike, watching
U.S. indecision at home, will not see the United States as a credible negotiating partner, ally, or
deterrent against wanton aggression. This
is a recipe for increased chaos, anarchy, and strife on the world scene.
The appeal, then, to
recreate anew as the hallmark of U.S. efforts abroad the predictability and resolve
that can only come from bipartisanship at home is as critical as during the
perilous days following World War II. Bipartisanship in Context The ease of
constructing bipartisanship, however, should not be overstated. Its halcyon
years are often idealized. People forget that the golden years from Pearl
Harbor to the Tet offensive were the exception rather than the rule. Consensus
was not a prevailing characteristic in the first 170 years of the Republic.
Critics have noted with justification that it was the clear lack of purpose
regarding vigorous U.S. involvement in world affairs that led to the U.S.
rejection of membership in the League of Nations. In no small measure, this
rejection led to the 20-year crisis that resulted in the rise of Hitler. Proponents
of bipartisanship point out its crowning achievements. Unprecedented unity
between the two political parties made it possible for President Harry S.
Truman and a Republican senator, Arthur H. Vandenberg (R-Mich.), to join forces
and create such monumental achievements as the Marshall Plan, the Truman
Doctrine, the North Atlantic Alliance, and the United Nations Charter. Despite
strains between the two parties over the Korean War and China, to name but two
issues, that unity held firm and enabled United States to act with continuity
and consistency. Allies saw that the United States was strong and reliable, and
the unmistakable message to adversaries was that the United States would abide
by its commitments. Some argue that it was the foreign policy consensus
prevalent during the Cold War that made possible the tragic U.S. involvement in
the Vietnam War. But this argument in no way invalidates the benefits of
bipartisanship and, in the case of Vietnam, represents an oversimplification of
the facts. The failure of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia had as much to do
with the unique circumstances of the war itself, which were exacerbated by the
then current theories of limited war fighting. These factors, in conjunction
with the profound domestic turmoil on both domestic and foreign policy that was
tearing at the U.S. political fabric, made a complicated and protracted war
abroad virtually impossible to prosecute. More generally, the fact remains that
the perception of strength resting on bipartisan unity has been crucial to the
United States in times of crisis. This principle was most vividly displayed by
the bipartisan support for President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban missile
crisis. Had the Soviets felt the United States was divided, the situation might
have ended in tragic defeat or quite possibly in a devastating war. Although
history will be the final judge, it could be argued that in the recent Gulf
crisis it was precisely the vast chasm that separated the Republicans from the
Democrats over whether to use force or to employ sanctions in order to reverse
Saddam Hussein's aggression that led him to calculate that the United States
would never actually employ significant military power. This encouraged him to
ignore the resolutions passed by the United Nations (UN) and wait for the
United States to seek a watered-down diplomatic compromise. Certainly Hussein's
statements that the American people would have to "face rows of coffins'
if there were a war, echoing statements emanating from lengthy Senate hearings
and floor debate, were designed to play into the antiwar sentiment that wanted
to "give sanctions a chance." Tragically, the perception of division
and weakness at home made the necessity for a military solution almost
inevitable. Executive-Legislative Relations: The Search for Balance The foundation of sustainable bipartisanship is
effective executive-legislative
relations. After
the Vietnam War, however, the cold war foreign policy consensus, supported by
harmonious executive-legislative relations and by both parties in Congress in a
manner that minimized conflict over foreign affairs, was rudely shattered.
Although it was not completely undone, as is often claimed by the pundits,
and central elements of
the postwar consensus enjoyed a fair deree of support, it was severely frayed.
As a result, a slide began down a slippery slope leading to the balkanization of the U.S. approach to
national security, and today this threatens to
inject chaos into the foreign policy process. Congress lies at the heart of the
issue.
Walt 2 (Stephen, Professor of
International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "American
Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls." Naval War College Review, Vol. 55,
Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages) Spring 2002. Proquest)
A second consequence of U.S. primacy is a decreased danger of
great-power rivalry and a higher level of overall international tranquility.
Ironically, those who argue that primacy is no longer important, because the
danger of war is slight, overlook the fact that the extent of American primacy
is one of the main reasons why the risk of great-power war is as low as it is.
For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major powers have been
intensely competitive, often punctuated by major wars and occasionally by
all-out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of the twentieth century, for
example, great-power wars killed over eighty million people. Today, however, the dominant position of the United States places
significant limits on the possibility of great-power competition, for at
least two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so
far ahead, other major powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant
position. Not only is there no possibility of a
"hegemonic war" (because there is no potential hegemon to
mount a challenge), but the risk of war via
miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the United States and
the other major powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war
when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides
can convince themselves that they might be able to win. When the balance of
power is heavily skewed, however, the leading state does not need to go to war
and weaker states dare not try.8 The second reason is that the continued
deployment of roughly two hundred thousand troops in Europe and in Asia
provides a further barrier to conflict in each region. So long as U.S. troops
are committed abroad, regional powers know that launching a war is likely to
lead to a confrontation with the United States. Thus, states within these
regions do not worry as much about each other, because the U.S. presence
effectively prevents regional conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe
has termed the "American pacifier" is not the only barrier to
conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one. This tranquilizing
effect is not lost on America's allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S.
dominance and dislike playing host to American troops, but they also do not
want "Uncle Sam" to leave.9 Thus, U.S.
primacy is of benefit to the United States, and to other countries as
well, because it dampens the overall level of
international insecurity. World politics might be more interesting if
the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete with
each other more actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better
one. A comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for genuine
heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than
"interesting" decades like the 1930s or 1940s.
G. John Ikenberry,
Professor @ Georgetown University, Spring 2001 (The National Interest)
First, America's
mature political institutions organized around the rule of law have made it a
relatively predictable and cooperative hegemon. The pluralistic and regularized
way in which U.S. foreign and security policy is made reduces surprises and
allows other states to build long-term, mutually beneficial relations. The
governmental separation of powers creates a shared decision-making system that
opens up the process and reduces the ability of any one leader to make abrupt
or aggressive moves toward other states. An active press and
competitive party system also provide a service to outside states by generating
information about U.S. policy and determining its seriousness of purpose. The messiness of a democracy can, indeed, frustrate American diplomats and confuse foreign observers. But
over the long term, democratic institutions produce more consistent and
credible policies--policies that do not reflect the capricious and
idiosyncratic whims of an autocrat. Think of the United States as a giant
corporation that seeks foreign investors. It is more likely to attract
investors if it can demonstrate that it operates according to accepted
accounting and fiduciary principles. The rule of law and the institutions of
policymaking in a democracy are the political equivalent of corporate
transparency and accountability. Sharp shifts in policy must ultimately be
vetted within the policy process and pass muster by an array of investigatory
and decision-making bodies. Because
it is a constitutional, rule-based democracy, outside states are more willing
to work with the United States-or, to
return to the corporate metaphor, to invest in ongoing partnerships.
Weida 04 [Jason
Collins, JD Candidate @ University of Connecticut School of Law, A Republic of Emergencies: Martial Law in American
Jurisprudence Connecticut Law Review, 36 Conn. L. Rev. 1397, Lexis]
The opinion that has had greatest influence, however,
is not Black's majority opinion, but Justice Jackson's concurrence. 302 Jackson
set forth the framework by which courts would examine the use of emergency
powers in the years to come. 303 At the heart of Jackson's theory of separation
of powers was relativity--that presidential
powers fluctuate depending upon their juxtaposition with those of Congress. 304 Jackson
deduced three categories which determined the degree of the President's
authority under the Constitution to implement emergency measures. 305 The first involved an executive action pursuant to an express or implied authorization from Congress. 306 Under these circumstances, presidential power was at its height,
"for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that
Congress can delegate." 307 The
Court would bestow congressional-executive cooperation with "the strongest
of presumptions and the widest [*1431] latitude of judicial interpretation." 308 The
second situation entailed an action in which the President and Congress had
concurrent authority, yet Congress was silent on the matter. 309 Here, the
President could bring only the executive's independent powers to bear, on which
the emergency measure would stand or fall. 310 The third category addressed
those presidential actions which were in direct
contravention with the express or implied will of Congress.
311 Such acts represented the lowest
constitutional authority of the President, subject to scrutiny by the courts.
312 Jackson placed Truman's seizure in the third category because Congress had
considered, and rejected, an amendment in the Taft-Hartley Act that would have
provided for exactly that which Executive Order No. 10340 sought to accomplish.
313 Thus, Jackson concurred
.Cooper 2 [Phillip, Professor of Public
Administration @ Portland State University, By
Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action 232-233]
A president who is focused on the short-term, internal
view of a possible decision may elect a power management approach. The emphasis
is on efficient, effective, prompt, and controlled action within the executive
branch. This is an increasingly common approach employed by new
administrations; certainly it has been by Reagan and his successors. Whether
spoken or unspoken, the tendency to adopt a power
management perspective as the base for the use of presidential direct action
tools may grow from an assumption that alternative approaches will simply not
work or not work rapidly enough because of recalcitrant administrative agencies
or opposition by other institutional players inside or
outside the Beltway. The executive orders on rulemaking issued by presidents
Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton and the Bush memoranda on the rulemaking
moratorium are clear examples of this approach. The tendency to use this
approach may also stem from the idea that the situation confronting the White
House is a real or a perceived emergency in which the executive branch must be
mobilized for action. Another tendency is to use this type of approach in
national security matters where the White House holds the view that time is of
the essence and a particular window of opportunity exists that must be seized.
This kind of action is common in the use of national security directives.
Control of sensitive materials, personnel practices, or communications is often
the focus of this kind of activity. Another
feature of the power management approach is the attempt to use the policies of
the executive branch to make a wider political point. Certainly
the Reagan administration's Drug Free Workplace order is an example, as are
many of the Clinton-era orders and memoranda associated with the reinventing
government initiative. Still, the power management approach presents many of
the dangers and challenges of the various types of instruments. The costs can
be high, and the damage both within government and to people outside it can be
significant. The rulemaking orders have tied
administrative agencies up in knots for years and have trapped them in a cross
fire between the Congress that adopted statutes requiring regulations to be
issued and presidents who tried to measure their success by the number of
rulemaking processes they could block. Reagan's
NSD 84 and other related directives seeking
to impose dramatically intensified controls
on access to information and control over communication during and
after government employment incited
a mini rebellion even among a number of
cabinet level officials and conveyed a sense of the
tenor of leadership being exercised in the executive branch that drew fire from many sources. The Clinton ethics order was meant to make a very public
and political point, but it was
one of the factors contributing to the administration's inability to staff many
of its key positions for months.
Kissinger 92, Henry, Nobel
Peace Prize Laureate, 3/21/08,[Executive Tyranny, http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/exec_tyranny.htm
/
With the unearthing of old and
newly improved executive orders recently we come to realise that this has been
an ideological strategy that was designed long before the present U.S.
administration. We are seeing the death throes of the US constitution and any
semblance of democracy that may have initially existed with the founding
fathers. It seems inevitable that the U.S. will become the epitome of a
totalitarian rule with a further mandate to build on its already established cultural
"McDonaldization" and geopolitical destruction of the planet. The
above words from Kissinger giving a speech at the 1992 Bilderberg meeting in
Evian, France, was recorded by a Swiss delegate, no doubt much to the chagrin
of this "elder statesman", who was unaware of the taping. The barely
disguised contempt for humanity is only too familiar within the ranks of the
"Elite", and this man is particularly active at the moment. No doubt
he is seeing the beginnings of a Faustian pay-off for services rendered. I
dread to think what misanthropic propaganda he is peddling behind the closed
doors of conferences and special "interest groups" in 2003.
Petro, Wake Forest Professor in
Toledo Law Review, 1974
(Sylvester,
Spring, page 480)
However,
one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one
thing: liberty." And it is
always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at
once." Thus, it
is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no
import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects. That road leads to chaos, tyranny,
despotism, and the end of all human aspiration. Ask
Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan
Dijas. In sum, if one believed in
freedom as a supreme value and the proper ordering principle for any society
aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified
and resisted with undying spirit.
Olsen 99, William J,
Attorney at Law, 10/27/99,
[The Impact of Executive Orders on the Legislative Process:
Executive Lawmaking?, http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-wo102799.html / dan v]
On January 30, 1788, in Federalist 47, James Madison observed that Montesquieus warning
— "There can be no liberty where the
legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body
of magistrates" — did not apply to our constitution because "[t]he
magistrate in whom the whole executive power resides cannot of himself make a
law, though he can put a negative on every law...." Despite Madisons
predictions, our government quickly strayed from its
principles and our chief magistrate has, in fact, again and again, legislated
by fiat. In fact, in our research on presidential directives (such as
executive orders and proclamations), I learned that from its beginning,
American political history has been marked by efforts of many presidents to
define the extent of their power and authority in ways violative of the U.S.
Constitution. As early as 1792, according to Thomas Jefferson: "I said to
[President Washington] that if the equilibrium of
the three great bodies, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, could be
preserved, if the Legislature could be kept independent, I should never fear
the result of such a government; but that I could not but be uneasy when I saw
that the Executive had swallowed up the Legislative branch."
Hallowell 13
(Billy Hallowell, writer for The Blaze, B.A. in journalism
and broadcasting from the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York
and an M.S. in social research from Hunter College in Manhattan, HERES HOW
OBAMA IS USING EXECUTIVE POWER TO BYPASS LEGISLATIVE PROCESS Feb. 11, 2013, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/11/heres-how-obamas-using-executive-power-to-bylass-legislative-process-plus-a-brief-history-of-executive-orders/,
KB)
In an era of polarized parties and a fragmented Congress,
the opportunities to legislate are few and far between, Howell said. So presidents
have powerful incentive to go it alone. And they do. And the political opposition
howls. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a
possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said
that on the gun-control front in particular, Obama is
abusing his power by imposing his policies via executive fiat instead of
allowing them to be debated in Congress. The Republican reaction is to be
expected, said John Woolley, co-director of the American
Presidency Project at the University of California in Santa Barbara.
For years there has been a growing concern about unchecked executive
power,
Woolley said. It tends to have a partisan content, with
contemporary complaints coming from the incumbent presidents opponents.
Gyatso 13
(Ngawang
Gyatso, B.A. in Political Economies from the University of California,
Berkeley, Obamas Counterterrorism Strategy Isnt Popular or Idealistic. Its
Realistic! May 24, 2013, http://jamandbutter.com/2013/05/24/obamas-counterterrorism-strategy-isnt-popular-or-idealistic-its-realistic/,
KB)
No sooner had the President
delivered his speech, than superficial narratives on Obama not living up to
humanitarian image and campaign promises surfaced in the media. And what
is especially disappointing is reputable sources
like the New York Times joining in unison with sensationalist news outlets like Huffington Post and Slate in drumming the
blame-it-on-Obama beat, when they surely understand the enormous weight
Obama shoulders in carefully repairing a failed and messy neoconservative
American foreign policy in the Middle-East – while his administration
aggressively confronts the undeniable reality of terrorism.
Risen 4 [Clay, Managing
editor of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, M.A. from the University of Chicago The Power of the
Pen: The Not-So-Secret Weapon of Congress-wary Presidents The American
Prospect, July 16,
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_power_of_the_pen]
The most effective check on executive orders has proven to be political.
When it comes to executive
orders, The president is much more clearly responsible, says Dellinger, who was heavily
involved in crafting orders under Clinton. Not only is there no involvement
from Congress, but the president has to personally sign the order.
Clinton's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
executive order may have helped him win
votes, but it also set off a massive congressional and public backlash. Right-wing Internet sites bristled
with comments about dictatorial powers, and Republicans warned of an end to
civil liberties as we know them. President Clinton is running roughshod over
our Constitution, said then–House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Indeed,
an unpopular executive
order can have immediate--and lasting--political consequences. In 2001,
for example, Bush proposed
raising the acceptable number
of parts per billion of arsenic in drinking water. It was a bone he was
trying to toss to the mining industry, and it would have overturned Clinton's order
lowering the levels. But the overwhelmingly negative public reaction forced Bush to quickly withdraw
his proposal--and it painted him indelibly as an anti-environmental
president.
Cooper 97 [Phillip,
Professor of Poli Sci @ University of Vermont, Administration and Society,
Lexis]
Interestingly enough, the effort to avoid opposition from Congress or
agencies can have the effect of turning the White House
itself into a lightning
rod. When an administrative agency takes action under
its statutory authority and responsibility, its
opponents generally focus their conflicts as limited disputes aimed at the
agency involved. Where the White House employs
an executive order, for example, to shift critical elements of decision making from the
agencies to the executive office of the president, the nature of conflict changes and the focus shifts to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
or at least to the executive
office buildings The saga of the OTRA battle with Congress under regulatory
review orders and the murky status of the Quayle Commission working in concert
with OIRA provides a dramatic case in point. The nature and focus of conflict
is in some measure affected by the fact that executive orders take administrative
action outside the normal rules of administrative law. And although there are
tensions in that field of law, the fact is that it has been carefully developed
over time with the intention of accommodating the needs of administration and
the demands for accountability by agencies filled with unelected administrators
who make important decisions having the force of law in the form of rules and
administrative adjudications. On one hand, administrative law requires open,
orderly, and participative decision processes, but it also creates significant
presumptions in favor of administrative agencies. The courts provide legal
support in the form of favorable decisions as well as assisting agencies in
enforcement through orders enforcing subpoena and other investigative authority
while also ordering compliance with agency decisions once the investigations
and decision processes are complete. Administrative law also provides a vehicle
for integrating administrative decisions having the force of law with the larger
body of law and policy. The use of executive orders
to confound or circumvent normal administrative law is counterproductive and
ultimately dysfunctional.
Michael J. Foley (professor
of International Politics at the University of Wales) and John E. Owens
(Senior Lecturer in US Politics at the University of Westminister) Congress and
the Presidency, 1996, p. 387
Second, the new ways in which delegated
authority was exercised by executive departments and agencies from the
1960s onwards encouraged greater congressional involvement in
administration. Traditionally, the predominant means by which agencies
fulfilled their congressional mandates was through case-by-case adjudication,
where factual evidence and legal deductions were the sole bases for decisions
and in consequence the impact on decision-making was typically small and
incremental. From the late 1960s onwards, under pressure from the newly empowered
public interest group movement, executive administrators resorted increasingly to issuing quasi-legislative rules which affected entire classes of individuals
and types of actions instead of specific named parties. As a result, the rule-making process was effectively transformed
into a surrogate political process which frequently attracted powerful
political interests on opposing sides and drew in legislators.
Kenneth R. Mayer (Associate
Professor of Political Science at University of Wisconsin-Madison) May 1999 Executive Orders and Presidential Power,
Journal Of Politics
At the same time, however, presidential exercise of authority through executive
orders depends on political and institutional context (King and Ragsdale 1988, 121-24).
Presidents cannot (and do not) issue one order after another and expect
immediate and unquestioned obedience. In deciding whether to issue substantive
orders, even when their authority is
clear, presidents consider how opponents might respond, the likely degree of
compliance, and the costs and benefits of issuing an order as opposed to
relying on some other strategy (such as legislation or litigation).
Robert Bedell (Deputy and
Acting General Counsel) October 27 1999 Testimony
before House Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process, Federal Document
Clearing House Congressional Testimony
From a public policy perspective, Executive
Orders have one salient advantage over these
other, less formal and invisible means of communication; they are
published in the Federal Register, so that both the Congress and the public can understand
what the President has done and can hold him accountable for his actions. The Committee also should understand the
severe limitation that Executive Orders have from the point of view of the
President and his senior staff.
Porter Goss Testimony
before House Subcommittee on Legislative and Budget Process, Federal News
Service, October 27, 1999
Additionally, a
by-product of modern technology appears to have been greater public awareness
of and interest in the unilateral actions taken by the executive. Today we have
cable television, talk radio, and the internet as means to provide
unprecedented access to a wealth of information for the average citizen with an interest. I have found in recent years that and of the
people I represent in southwest Florida are contacting me to discuss concerns
with executive orders.
Englehardt 5
[Tom
Engelhardt created and runs the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The
Nation Institute where he is a Fellow. Each spring he is a Teaching Fellow at
the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkel. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/32668/
ETB]
Here it is worth reviewing the positions Yoo advocated while
in the executive branch and since, and their consequences in the "war on
terror." At every turn, Yoo has sought
to exploit the "flexibility" he finds in the Constitution to advocate
an approach to the "war on terror" in which legal limits are either
interpreted away or rejected outright. Just two weeks after the
September 11 attacks, Yoo sent an extensive memo to Tim Flanigan, deputy White
House counsel, arguing that the President had unilateral authority to use
military force not only against the terrorists responsible for the September 11
attacks but against terrorists anywhere on the globe, with or without
congressional authorization. Yoo followed that opinion with a series of memos in
January 2002 maintaining, against the strong objections of the State
Department, that the Geneva Conventions should not be applied to any detainees
captured in the conflict in Afghanistan. Yoo argued that the president could
unilaterally suspend the conventions; that al-Qaeda was not party to the
treaty; that Afghanistan was a "failed state" and therefore the
president could ignore the fact that it had signed the conventions; and that
the Taliban had failed to adhere to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions
regarding the conduct of war and therefore deserved no protection. Nor, he
argued, was the president bound by customary international law, which insists
on humane treatment for all wartime detainees. Relying on Yoo's reasoning, the
Bush administration claimed that it could capture and detain any person who the
president said was a member or supporter of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, and could
categorically deny all detainees the protections of the Geneva Conventions,
including a hearing to permit them to challenge their status and restrictions
on inhumane interrogation practices. Echoing Yoo, Alberto
Gonzales, then White House counsel, argued at the time that one of the
principal reasons for denying detainees protection under the Geneva Conventions
was to "preserve flexibility" and make it easier to "quickly
obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors." When CIA
officials reportedly raised concerns that the methods they were using to
interrogate high-level al-Qaeda detainees -- such as waterboarding -- might
subject them to criminal liability, Yoo was again consulted. In response, he
drafted the August 1, 2002, torture memo, signed by his superior, Jay Bybee,
and delivered to Gonzales. In that memo, Yoo "interpreted" the
criminal and international law bans on torture in as narrow and legalistic a
way as possible; his evident purpose was to allow government officials to use
as much coercion as possible in interrogations. Yoo wrote that threats of death are permissible if they do
not threaten "imminent death," and that drugs designed to disrupt the
personality may be administered so long as they do not "penetrate to the
core of an individual's ability to perceive the world around him." He said
that the law prohibiting torture did not prevent interrogators from inflicting
mental harm so long as it was not "prolonged." Physical
pain could be inflicted so long as it was less severe than the pain associated
with "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily
function, or even death." Even this
interpretation did not preserve enough executive "flexibility" for
Yoo. In a separate section of the memo, he argued that if these loopholes were
not sufficient, the president was free to order outright torture. Any law
limiting the president's authority to order torture during wartime, the memo
claimed, would "violate the Constitution's sole vesting of the
Commander-in-Chief authority in the President." Since
leaving the Justice Department, Yoo has also defended the practice of
"extraordinary renditions," in which the United States has kidnapped
numerous "suspects" in the war on terror and "rendered"
them to third countries with records of torturing detainees. He has argued that
the federal courts have no right to review actions by the president that are
said to violate the War Powers Clause. And he has defended the practice of
targeted assassinations, otherwise known as "summary executions." In short, the flexibility Yoo advocates allows the administration to
lock up human beings indefinitely without charges or hearings, to subject them
to brutally coercive interrogation tactics, to send them to other countries
with a record of doing worse, to assassinate persons it describes as the enemy
without trial, and to keep the courts from interfering with all such actions. Has such flexibility actually aided the U.S. in dealing
with terrorism? In all likelihood, the
policies and attitudes Yoo has
advanced have made the country less secure. The abuses at Guantnamo and Abu Ghraib have become
international embarrassments for the United States, and by many accounts have
helped to recruit young people to join al-Qaeda. The U.S. has squandered the
sympathy it had on September 12, 2001, and we now find ourselves in a world
perhaps more hostile than ever before. With respect to detainees,
thanks to Yoo, the U.S. is now in an untenable bind: on the one hand, it has
become increasingly unacceptable for the U.S. to hold hundreds of prisoners
indefinitely without trying them; on the other hand our coercive and inhumane
interrogation tactics have effectively granted many of the prisoners immunity
from trial. Because the evidence we might use against them is tainted by their
mistreatment, trials would likely turn into occasions for exposing the United
States' brutal interrogation tactics. This predicament was entirely avoidable.
Had we given alleged al-Qaeda detainees the fair hearings required by the
Geneva Conventions at the outset, and had we conducted humane interrogations at
Guantnamo, Abu Ghraib, Camp Mercury, and elsewhere, few would have objected to
the U.S. holding some detainees for the duration of the military conflict, and
we could have tried those responsible for war crimes. What has been so
objectionable to many in the U.S. and abroad is the government's refusal to
accept even the limited constraints of the laws of war. The consequences of Yoo's vaunted "flexibility"
have been self-destructive for the U.S. -- we have turned a world in which
international law was on our side into one in which we see it as our enemy. The
Pentagon's National Defense Strategy, issued in March 2005, states, "Our
strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a
strategy of the weak, using international fora, judicial processes, and
terrorism." The proposition that judicial processes -- the very essence
of the rule of law -- are to be dismissed as a strategy of the weak, akin to
terrorism, suggests the continuing strength of Yoo's influence. When the rule
of law is seen simply as a device used by terrorists, something has gone
perilously wrong. Michael Ignatieff has written that "it is the very nature of a democracy that it not only does,
but should, fight with one hand tied behind its back. It is also in the nature
of democracy that it prevails against its enemies precisely because it
does." Yoo persuaded the Bush administration to untie its hand and abandon
the constraints of the rule of law. Perhaps that is why we are not prevailing.
V2A, 6/11/12, (Vision to
America), "Obama has signed 126 executive orders in 40 months!" http://visiontoamerica.org/10286/obama-has-signed-923-executive-orders-in-40-months/
Obama has signed 126 Executive Orders in 40 months!
What did Congress do in those 40 months? The following are a few from 2011
and 2012. -Executive Order 13600 Establishing
the Presidents Global Development Council -Executive Order 13601
Establishment of the Interagency Trade Enforcement Center -Executive Order
13602 Establishing a White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities
-Executive Order 13603 National Defense Resources Preparedness -Executive
Order 13604 Improving Performance of Federal
Permitting and Review of Infrastructure
Projects
-Executive Order 13605 Supporting Safe and Responsible Development of
Unconventional Domestic Natural Gas Resources -Executive Order 13607
Establishing Principles of Excellence for Educational Institutions Serving
Service Members, Veterans, Spouses, and Other Family Members -Executive Order
13609 Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation -Executive Order 13612
Providing an Order of Succession Within the Department of Agriculture -Executive
Order 13564 Establishment of the Presidents Council on Jobs and
Competitiveness -Executive Order 13565 Establishment of the Intellectual
Property Enforcement Advisory Committees -Executive Order 13569 Amendments to
Executive Orders 12824, 12835, 12859, and 13532, Reestablishment Pursuant to
Executive Order 13498, and Revocation of Executive Order 13507 -Executive Order
13575 Establishment of the White House Rural Council -Executive Order 13579
Regulation and Independent Regulatory Agencies.
Rozell 12
(Mark
Rozell, Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University, From Idealism to
Power: The Presidency in the Age of Obama 2012, http://www.libertylawsite.org/book-review/from-idealism-to-power-the-presidency-in-the-age-of-obama/,
KB)
A substantial portion of Goldsmiths book presents in detail
his case that various forces outside of government, and
some within, are responsible for hamstringing the president
in unprecedented fashion: Aggressive, often intrusive, journalism,
that at times endangers national security; human rights and other advocacy groups,
some domestic and other cross-national, teamed with big
resources and talented, aggressive lawyers, using every legal category and
technicality possible to complicate executive action; courts thrust into the mix, having to decide critical national security law
controversies, even when the judges themselves have little direct
knowledge or expertise on the topics brought before them; attorneys within the executive branch itself advising against actions based on often narrow
legal interpretations and with little understanding of the broader implications
of tying down the president with legalisms.
Nzelibe 11
[Jibe,
Professor of Law, Northwestern University Law School. William and Mary Law
Review 53:389. http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1216&context=facultyworkingpapers
ETB]
The problem, I suggest below, is that these institutional
accounts do not
capture the full range of pressures that influence the preferences of elected
officials for expanding or contracting presidential authority. Although Presidents
and their copartisans in Congress may be pushed towards an expansive vision
of presidential authority by a shared desire to maintain maximum
policy flexibility, they are often pulled by their
partisan commitments to try to embrace constraints that limit the Presidents policy
flexibility on those issues that may be
owned by the political opposition.21 Indeed, both electoral and ideological incentives may explain why
politicians are sometimes willing to
commit to institutional arrangements they
hope will constrain their successors even if it comes at the expense of maintaining policy flexibility. To be
clear, some constitutional scholars have recognized that societal actors may
try to usher in new constitutional orders for partisan objectives,
but these scholars have focused largely on tactics like stacking the
judiciary, exerting greater influence over administrative agencies, or
establishing policy agendas in a way that demobilizes political opponents.22
However, these scholars have neither focused specifically on the
separation of powers nor examined the interaction between partisan
issue ownership and constitutional structure, which is a crucial
aspect of the approach this Essay advances.
Posner 2K
[Michael, Professor Emeritus at the University of Oregon and Adjunct Professor
at the Weill Medical College in New York Blocking the Presidential Power Play
National Journal, Jan 1, http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/nj_20000101_15.php]
Some legal experts counsel Congress to be careful not
to usurp legitimate presidential power. One expert urging caution is Douglas
Cox, a lawyer who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal
Counsel at the Justice Department during the Bush Administration. "When a
President overreaches and uses executive orders to invade or supersede the legislative
powers of Congress, Congress may be sufficiently
provoked to consider an across-the-board approach to rein in those abuses," he
told the House Rules subcommittee.
"Although that reaction is understandable, Congress must be careful
to understand the extent to which executive orders are a necessary adjunct of
the President's constitutional duties," Cox added. "At all times,
Congress has ample legislative and political means to respond to abusive or
lawless executive orders, and thus
Congress should resist the temptation to pursue more sweeping, more draconian,
and more questionable responses."
Paul 98
[Paul
R, Professor
@ University of Connecticut School of Law The Geopolitical Constitution:
Executive Expediency and Executive Agreements California Law Review, 86 Calif. L. Rev. 671, Lexis]
Second, the growth of executive
power has created a bias in favor of internationalism that has often led to
failure. Possessing a virtual monopoly power
over foreign relations has tempted presidents to send troops abroad or
to make foreign commitments. Time and again the executive has stumbled into foreign conflicts,
like Bosnia, Lebanon, Iran and Somalia, with tragic
results. n32 At a minimum, congressional
[*680] participation might have slowed
decision-making, leaving time for public deliberation. n33 Third, the absence of congressional debate has often accounted
for the lack of public support for foreign commitments. When U.S. forces
have suffered casualties, such as in Somalia or Beirut, public opinion turned
against the executive. Without the popular will to
stay the course, presidents have withdrawn U.S. forces in some cases. As
a result, U.S. policy has often lacked coherence. Though Congress was blamed
for this inconsistency in many cases, one reason members of Congress so readily
changed their minds was that they were not politically invested in the policy.
Gray 4
Gray
4 [Colin, Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies at the
University of Reading, England, The Sheriff: Americas Defense of the New World
Order, pp. 94-5]
Seventh,
the American sheriff cannot police world order if domestic opinion is not
permissive. The longevity of U.S.
guardianship depends vitally upon the skill, determination, and luck with which
the country protects and burnishes its reputation for taking strategically
effective action. But it also depends upon the willingness of American society
to accept the costs that comprise the multi-faceted price of this particular
form of glory.
The American public is probably nowhere near as casualty-shy as popular
mythology insists, though the same cannot be said with equal confidence of the
professional American military. Such, at least, are the conclusions of the
major recent study on this much debated subject." It is the opinion of
this author that popular American attitudes toward casualties stem fairly
directly from the sense of involvement, or lack of the same, in the matters at
issue. If valid, this judgment is good news for the feasibility of U.S.
performance in the sheriff's role, but a dire systemic problem may still
remain. Specifically, as principal global guardian, the United States risks being thwarted on the domestic
front by the central and inalienable weakness that mars attempts to practice
the theory of collective security. Bacevich and others advance powerful arguments connecting American
strategic behavior to the promotion of what they see, not wholly implausibly,
as an informal American empire. But many, if not most, American voters will be
hard to convince that U.S. military action is warranted save in those
mercifully rare instances when it is directed to thwart some clear and present
danger. A doctrine of military preemption, typically meaning prevention, no
matter how strategically prudent, will be as difficult to justify domestically
as abroad. There is an obvious way to diminish the amount, intensity, and
duration of domestic political opposition to military operations conducted for
purposes that do not resonate loudly on Main Street. That solution is to adopt
a style of warfare that imposes few costs on American society, especially in
the most human of dimensions-casualties. But since war is a duel, the United
States' ability to perform all but painlessly as sheriff can never lie totally
within its own control. Nonetheless, the potential problem of a reluctant
domestic public should be eased if care is taken in selecting policing duties
and if the troops who must execute the strategy are tactically competent. All
of this would be more reassuring were we not respectful students of
Clausewitz's teaching that "War is the realm of chance," an aphorism
that we have had occasion to quote before
Dean 2
[John,
White House Counsel to Nixon and FindLaw Writ Columnist, Tom Ridge's Non-
Testimonial Appearance Before Congress: Another Nixon-style Move By The Bush
Administration, Find Law, April 12 http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20020412.html]
Congressional oversight and
the collective wisdom of Congress are essential in
our dealing with terrorism.. Presidents don't issue press releases about their mistakes
Nor do they report interagency squabbles that reduce executive effectiveness. They don't investigate how funds have been spent poorly or
unwisely. And they're not inclined to explain even conspicuous problems in
gathering national security intelligence. When did anyone hear of a President
rooting out incompetent appointees (after all, they chose them in the first
place)? In contrast, Congress wants to do all these
things, thereby keeping a President on his toes. Its oversight is crucial -
for the Presidential and Executive Branch limitations I've suggested are only a few of the myriad problems that might hamper
the efficacy of the Executive in its efforts to deal with terrorism, and
that Congress can help to correct. Justifiably, Americans are worried, but they
are getting on with their lives. Shielding and hiding the man in charge of
homeland security from answering the questions of Congress is entirely
unjustified. This talk of "separation of powers" and "executive
privilege" is unmitigated malarkey. It is a makeshift excuse to keep the
Congress from policing the White House
Slonim, July 24, 2006: [Nancy Cowger Slonim – American Bar
Association spokewwoman. July 24, 2006, American Bar Association, Blue-ribbon
task force finds president Bushs signing statements undermine separation of
powers. Embargoed for AM Editions. http://www.abanet.org/media/releases/news072406.html
]
Presidential
signing statements that assert
President Bushs authority to disregard or decline to enforce
laws adopted by Congress undermine the rule of law and our constitutional
system of separation of powers, according to a report released today by a blue-ribbon
American Bar Association task force. To address these concerns, the task force
urges Congress to adopt legislation enabling its members to seek court review
of signing statements that assert the Presidents right to ignore or not
enforce laws passed by Congress, and urges the President to veto bills he feels
are not constitutional. The Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and
the Separation of Powers Doctrine was created by ABA President Michael S. Greco
with the approval of the ABA Board of Governors in June, to examine the
changing role of presidential signing statements after the Boston Globe on
April 30 revealed an exclusive reliance on presidential signing statements, in
lieu of vetoes, by the Bush Administration. In appointing the special task
force Greco said, The use of presidential signing statements raises serious
issues relating to the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. I have
appointed the Task Force to take a balanced, scholarly look at the use and
implications of signing statements, and to propose appropriate ABA policy
consistent with our Associations commitment to safeguarding the rule of law
and the separation of powers in our system of government. The task force
report and recommendations will be presented to the ABAs policy-making House
of Delegates for adoption at its upcoming Annual Meeting Aug. 7-8. Until the
ABA House has taken formal action, the report and recommendations represent
only the views of the task force. The
bipartisan task force, composed of constitutional scholars, former presidential
advisers, and legal and judicial experts, noted that President George W. Bush
is not the first president to use signing statements, but said, It was the
number and nature of the current Presidents signing statements which
compelled our recommendations. The task force said its report and
recommendations are intended to underscore the importance of the doctrine of
separation of powers. They therefore represent a call to this President and to all his
successors to fully respect the rule of law and our constitutional system of
separation of powers and checks and balances. The task force determined that
signing statements that signal the presidents intent to disregard laws adopted
by Congress undermine the separation of powers by depriving Congress of the
opportunity to override a veto, and by shutting off policy debate between the
two branches of government. According to the task force, they operate as a
line item veto, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional.
Noting that the Constitution is silent about presidential signing statements,
the task force found that, while several recent presidents have used them, the
frequency of signing statements that challenge laws has escalated
substantially, and their purpose has changed dramatically,
during the Bush Administration. The task force report states, From the
inception of the Republic until 2000, Presidents produced fewer than 600
signing statements taking issue with the bills they signed. According to the
most recent update, in his one-and-a-half terms so far, President George Walker
Bush ... has produced more than 800. The report found that President Bushs
signing statements are ritualistic, mechanical and generally carry no citation
of authority or detailed explanation. Even when [a] frustrated Congress
finally enacted a law requiring the Attorney General to submit to Congress a
report of any instance in which that official or any officer of the Department of
Justice established or pursued a policy of refraining from enforcing any
provision of any federal statute, this too was subjected to a ritual signing
statement insisting on the Presidents authority to withhold information
whenever he deemed it necessary. This
report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy, said
Greco. If left unchecked, the presidents practice does grave harm to the
separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances, that have
sustained our democracy for more than two centuries. Immediate action is
required to address this threat to the Constitution and to the rule of law in
our country. Greco
said that the task forces report constructively offers procedures that
consider the prerogatives both of the president and of the Congress, while
protecting the publics right to know what legislation is adopted by Congress
and if and how the president intends to enforce it. This transparency is
essential if the American people are to have confidence that the rule of law is
being respected by both citizens and government leaders. The bipartisan and
independent task force is chaired by Miami lawyer Neal Sonnett, a former
Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Criminal Division for the Southern District
of Florida. He is past chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section, chair of the
ABA Task Force on Domestic Surveillance and the ABA Task Force on Treatment of
Enemy Combatants; and president-elect of the American Judicature
Society. "Abuse of presidential signing statements
poses a threat to the rule of law," said Sonnett. "Whenever actions
threaten to weaken our system of checks and balances and the separation of
powers, the American Bar Association has a profound responsibility to speak out
forcefully to protect those lynchpins of democracy."
Forrester 89 [Ray, Professor, @ Hastings
College of the Law, University of California, Former dean of the law schools at
Vanderbilt, Tulane, and Cornell, Presidential Wars in the Nuclear Age: An
Unresolved Problem George Washington Law Review, August, 57 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1636, Lexis]
A basic theory--if not the basic theory of our Constitution--is that
concentration of power in any one person,
or one group, is dangerous to mankind. The Constitution, therefore, contains
a strong system of checks and balances, starting with the separation of powers
between the President, Congress, and the
Supreme Court. The message is that no
one of them is safe with unchecked power. Yet, in what is probably the most dangerous governmental power ever
possessed, we find the potential for world destruction lodged in the discretion
of one person. As
a result of public indignation aroused by the Vietnam disaster, in which tens
of thousands lost their lives in military actions initiated by a succession of
Presidents, Congress in 1973 adopted, despite presidential veto, the War Powers Resolution. Congress finally asserted its checking and balancing
duties in relation to the making of presidential wars. Congress declared in
section 2(a) that its purpose was to fulfill the intent of the framers of the
Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of
both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United
States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent
involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to
the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations. The law
also stated in section 3 that [t]he President in every possible instance shall
consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into
hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is
clearly indicated. . . . Other limitations not essential to this
discussion are also provided. The intent of the law is clear. Congress undertook to check the President, at least by prior consultation,
in any executive action that might lead to
hostilities and war. [*1638] President Nixon, who
initially vetoed the resolution, claimed that it was an unconstitutional
restriction on his powers as Executive and Commander in Chief of the military.
His successors have taken a similar view. Even so, some of them have at times
complied with the law by prior consultation with representatives of Congress,
but obedience to the law has been uncertain and
a subject of continuing controversy between Congress and the President.
Ordinarily, the issue of the
constitutionality of a law would be decided by the Supreme Court. But, despite
a series of cases in which such a decision has been sought, the Supreme Court
has refused to settle the controversy. The usual ground for such a refusal is
that a "political question" is involved. The rule is well established
that the federal judiciary will decide only "justiciable"
controversies. "Political questions" are not "justiciable."
However, the standards established by the Supreme Court in 1962 in Baker v.
Carr, 369 U.S. 186, to determine the distinction between "justiciable
controversies" and "political questions" are far from clear. One
writer observed that the term "political question" [a]pplies to all
those matters of which the court, at a given time, will be of the opinion that
it is impolitic or inexpedient to take jurisdiction. Sometimes this idea of
inexpediency will result from the fear of the vastness of the consequences that
a decision on the merits might entail. Finkelstein, Judicial
Self-Limitation, 37 HARV. L. REV. 338, 344 (1924)(footnote omitted). It is
difficult to defend the Court's refusal to assume the responsibility of
decisionmaking on this most critical issue. The Court has been fearless in
deciding other issues of "vast consequences" in many historic disputes,
some involving executive war power. It is to be hoped that the Justices will
finally do their duty here. But in the meantime the
spectre of single-minded power persists, fraught with all of the frailties of
human nature that each human possesses, including the President. World history
is filled with tragic examples. Even if the Court assumed its responsibility to tell us
whether the Constitution gives Congress the necessary power to check the
President, the War Powers Resolution itself is unclear. Does the Resolution
require the President to consult with Congress before launching a nuclear
attack? It has been asserted that "introducing United States Armed Forces
into hostilities" refers only to military personnel and does not include
the launching of nuclear missiles alone. In support of this interpretation, it
has been argued that Congress was concerned about the human losses in Vietnam
and in other presidential wars, rather than about the weaponry. Congress, of
course, can amend the Resolution to state explicitly that "the
introduction of Armed Forces" includes missiles as well as personnel.
However, the President could continue to act without prior consultation by
renewing the claim first made by President [*1639]
Nixon that the Resolution is an unconstitutional invasion of the executive
power. Therefore, the real solution, in the absence of a Supreme Court
decision, would appear to be a constitutional amendment. All must obey a clear
rule in the Constitution. The adoption of an amendment is very difficult. Wisely,
Article V requires that an amendment may be proposed only by the vote of
two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by the application of the legislatures
of two-thirds of the states, and the proposal must be ratified by the
legislatures or conventions of three-fourths of the states. Despite the
difficulty, the Constitution has been amended twenty-six times. Amendment can
be done when a problem is so important that it arouses the attention and
concern of a preponderant majority of the American people. But the people must
be made aware of the problem. It
is hardly necessary to belabor the relative importance of the control of
nuclear warfare. A
constitutional amendment may be, indeed, the appropriate method. But the most
difficult issue remains. What should the amendment provide? How can the problem
be solved specifically? The Constitution in section 8 of Article I stipulates
that "[t]he Congress shall have power . . . To declare War. . . ."
The idea seems to be that only these many representatives of the people,
reflecting the public will, should possess the power to commit the lives and
the fortunes of the nation to warfare. This approach makes much more sense in a
democratic republic than entrusting the decision to one person, even though he
may be designated the "Commander in Chief" of the military forces.
His power is to command the war after the people, through their
representatives, have made the basic choice to submit themselves and their
children to war. There is a recurring
relevation of a paranoia of power throughout human history that has impelled
one leader after another to draw their people into wars which, in hindsight, were foolish, unnecessary, and, in some instances, downright
insane. Whatever
may be the psychological influences that drive the single decisionmaker to
these irrational commitments of the lives and fortunes of others, the fact
remains that the behavior is a predictable one in any government that does not
provide an effective check and balance against uncontrolled power in the hands
of one human. We, naturally, like to think that our leaders are above such irrational behavior.
Eventually, however, human nature, with all its weakness, asserts itself
whatever the setting. At least that is the evidence that experience and history give us, even
in our own relatively benign society, where the Executive is subject to the
rule of law. [*1640] Vietnam and other
more recent engagements show that it can happen and has happened here. But the "nuclear football"--the ominous "black bag"
--remains in the sole possession of the President.
Kogan 11
[Mark
Kogan is a lawyer working in public affairs in Washington, D.C.. He holds a J.D.
from the American University Washington College of Law. http://www.policymic.com/articles/425/mark-my-words-the-myth-of-presidential-war-powers
ETB]
In 1973, Congress passed the War
Powers Resolution, giving the president unilateral power to commit U.S. forces
anywhere in the world, for any reason, for a period of up to 90 days.
This act has been mired in controversy since passage and for good reason; the
act effectively transferred Congress exclusive and enumerated power to declare
war to the president, no questions asked. It was,
and remains, an appallingly
unconstitutional transfer of power that the
executive has joyously abused to this day.
President Obamas action in Libya is merely the
latest exercise of presidential war powers that were invented in the
1930s and enshrined in the 1970s. Obama is not the first president, nor will he
be the last, to send our young men and women into harms way without so much as informing
Congress, much less asking their permission.
Unfortunately, few members of Congress are willing
to be the first to try and reverse course on this unconstitutional status quo.
The dangers of being labeled unpatriotic, as well as the convenience of having
the ability to go to war at will when your man is in power, have kept
our elected officials criticizing the Presidents actions, but never doing
anything about their constitutional legitimacy. Nobody wants to give away their ace in the
hole and, in our modern political environment, who can blame them? Well me, for
starters. What we seem to forget is that in the hyperbolic rhetoric being
thrown around by our politicians hang the lives of men and women who have
volunteered to serve and protect our country: 4,441 men and women have died in
Iraq. Nearly 33,000 have been injured, many irreversibly so. 1,517 more lay
dead in Afghanistan. How many more of our bravest are we willing to throw to
the political winds? No president,
regardless of party, history, or politics, should
have the unilateral and unchallengeable right to send Americans to their death.
It is long overdue that our elected representatives stand up for American
soldiers and return the power to declare war where the constitution put it,
with the people, not one man.
Burnham 3
[Margaret Burnham is a law professor at Northeastern
University School of Law. She co-authored the Plaintiffs' brief in Doe v. Bush.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew99.php ETB]
Implicated in the questions raised by the suit are the
larger debates over originalism and separation of powers that have recently
occupied much attention in the Supreme Court. Clearly, clarifying constitutional meaning on the war powers
question holds special urgency today. But in Doe v. Bush the
district court declined to join the debate at all. Instead, it opted out of the
debate altogether, adopting the Government's position claim that the matter is
a non-justiciable political question. Under the
political question doctrine, of course, the
judiciary declines to wade into certain supposed "political
thickets," theoretically leaving the underlying constitutional
issue undecided. But, especially given the
nature of the debate, invocation of the doctrine
- ostensibly to avoid decision - still adds
"precedent" to the pro-executive side of the scale. Judicial demurral
leaves a vacuum that the executive will fill on its own terms - thereby
creating new facts to support its exclusivity claim. The executive's evidence
that it possesses the trigger power is that it has many times in the past
exercised it absent congressional authority and without judicial interference.
This is a win-win syllogism for unchecked executive
authority: its use of the power is an unreviewable political prerogative and,
ipso facto, proof of its legitimacy, and so the evidence in its favor is
infinitely accumulative.